Patent Application
20180315446
In certain embodiments, a system includes a cooling plate coupled to a first disk holder and to a second disk holder. The first disk holder and the second disk holder are each shaped to be removably coupled to respective inner diameter surfaces of disks such that, when coupled, each disk is positioned a distance from the cooling plate.
In certain embodiments, a method of conditioning disks includes positioning a first disk at a first conditioning position for conditioning the first disk. The method further includes positioning a second disk at a second conditioning position for conditioning the second disk while the first disk is being conditioned. The method further includes removing the first disk from the first conditioning position and positioning a third disk at the first conditioning position while the second disk is being conditioned.
While multiple embodiments are disclosed, still other embodiments of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, which shows and describes illustrative embodiments of the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and detailed description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not restrictive.
While the disclosure is amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the disclosure to the particular embodiments described but instead is intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope the appended claims.
Disk-shaped magnetic recording media for hard disk drives are subjected to a variety of process steps during manufacturing. During manufacturing, various magnetic and non-magnetic films are deposited onto a glass or aluminum substrate which moves to different stations along a manufacturing line. The manufacturing line includes disk conditioning machines that carry out various conditioning processes that clean, heat, and/or cool disks at different stages of manufacture. Certain embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to systems and methods for conditioning disks. Although disk cooling is the exemplary conditioning process described below, the disclosure is applicable to other disk-conditioning processes.
Some disk-cooling processes involve moving a single disk into a chamber and positioning the disk between two cooling plates. Once the disk is positioned and the chamber is prepared, the cooling plates are programmed to move towards the disk and maintain their position for a predetermined period of time to cool the disk. Then, the cooling plates are moved away from the disk and the process is repeated for the next disk.
One concern with the above-described process is that it can be difficult to accurately position and/or verify the position of the cooling plates next to the disk. Another concern is that disks are cooled serially which, in practice, limits the amount of time devoted to cooling each disk. With the above-described process, simply increasing the amount of time devoted to cooling each disk is not a practical option because increased cooling time increases overall manufacturing time and/or because the time allotted to cooling processes is fixed within a manufacturing line. Further, simply adding additional cooling stations undesirably increases the footprint and overall cost of the manufacturing line. Certain embodiments of the present disclosure are accordingly directed to, among other things, approaches that provide increased flexibility in the amount of time spent conditioning disks and/or that provide increased predictability in positioning the disks for conditioning.
The machine 100 also includes a door 116 through which a first disk carrier 118A can enter and exit the chamber 106. The first disk carrier 118A is an apparatus configured to move a disk within a manufacturing line. The first disk carrier 118A shown in
During operation of the machine 100, the door 116 of the machine 100 opens to allow the first disk carrier 118A to enter the chamber 106 with a first disk 1000A. In some embodiments, before entering the chamber, the first disk 1000A may have been subjected to a heat-intensive process such that the first disk 1000A requires cooling for a subsequent process. The robotic arm 102 includes an end effector 122 that is configured to mechanically and releasably couple to an inner diameter surface 1002A (
While the chamber 106 is being prepared, the robotic arm 102 rotates and couples the first disk 1000A to the cooling plate 104 via a one of a plurality of disk holders 124A and 124B, which are coupled to the cooling plate 104.
In some embodiments, like the embodiment shown in
Regardless of what portion of the disk 1000A rests on what portion of the disk holders, 124A and 124B, or whether the disk 1000A rests on an intervening material, the disk holders 124A and 124B are configured such that disks rest at a distance, D, from the cooling plate 104.
Configuring the disk holders, 124A and 124B, such that disks tend to rest at the distance, D, helps provide consistent and predictable positioning of the disks. A shorter distance can increase the rate at which the disk is cooled, thus reducing the time required to cool the disk for a given required temperature differential.
The cooling plate 104 acts as a heatsink that cools the disks. Cooling is facilitated by the gas (e.g., hydrogen, helium) in the chamber 106. The cooling plate 104 can comprise materials such as copper that have high thermal conductivity. In some embodiments, the cooling plate 104 is at least partially coated with black body coating (e.g., carbon-nanotube-based coatings) to increase cooling capabilities. The cooling plate 104 can include channels (not shown) that facilitate flow of a cryogenic liquid within the cooling plate 104. The cooling plate 104 can, itself, form part of a wall of the chamber 106.
As previously mentioned, during operation of the machine 100, the robotic arm 102 positions the first disk 1000A on the first disk holder 124A coupled to the cooling plate 104, which cools the first disk 1000A to a desired temperature. For the first disk 1000A to reach the desired temperature, the machine 100 can be programmed to maintain the first disk's position on the first disk holder 124A for a predetermined period of time. The predetermined period of time can be determined based on the desired temperature, the disk's estimated starting temperature, the distance (D), the cooling plate's temperature, the pressure in the chamber 106, among other things. While the first disk 1000A is positioned next to the cooling plate 104 for cooling, the robotic arm 102 (or a separate robotic arm) can work towards positioning a second disk next to the cooling plate 104 on the second disk holder 124B.
The above-described steps for handling the second disk 1000B, or at least some of those steps, are carried out while the first disk 1000A is positioned next to the cooling plate 104 and being cooled. As previously mentioned, some disk-cooling processes involve cooling disks one-by-one in serial which, in practice, limits the amount of time able to be devoted to cooling each disk. The above-described approach permits the first disk 1000A to be cooled while (i.e., in parallel) the second disk 1000B is being positioned in the chamber 106. This increases the time the first disk 1000A can be positioned next to the cooling plate 104 and therefore allows for greater flexibility in the time a disk can be cooled. A longer cooling time allows for greater cooling capabilities such as the ability to cool a disk from a higher temperature to a desired temperature. Longer disk-cooling times also allow for the disk to be cooled by a single cooling plate 104 rather than multiple cooling plates—although the description is not limited to single-cooling-plate embodiments. In certain embodiments, when cooling a disk from one side, it can take between three and four seconds for the full disk to cool to a desired temperature throughout its full thickness. Disk-cooling approaches that cool disks serially typically are not given more than two seconds to cool a given disk because the entire process (i.e., loading and/or positioning the disk, preparing the chamber, cooling the disk, and unloading and/or positioning the disk) for such approaches is limited to a total of three seconds per disk in a manufacturing line. As such, with a total allotment of three seconds, the non-cooling processes significantly reduce the amount of time able to be spent actually cooling the disk. In contrast, the above-described approach increases the cooling time available for a given disk.
As shown in
A similar process can then be repeated for subsequent disks. As shown in
As mentioned above, during manufacture disks are subjected to conditioning processes other than cooling, such as cleaning and heating processes. Although disk cooling was the exemplary process described above, similar approaches can be applied to other disk-conditioning processes.
The method 700 includes positioning a first disk at a first conditioning position for conditioning the first disk (step 702). The method 700 further includes, positioning a second disk at a second conditioning position for conditioning the second disk while the first disk is being conditioned (step 704). The first and second conditioning positions can include a position, for example, within a bath of a cleaning liquid or adjacent a cleaning device such as a nozzle that is configured to expel a cleaning gas to dispel contaminants. The first and second conditioning positions can also include positions adjacent a cooling device such as the cooling plate 104 of
The method 700 further includes removing the first disk from the first conditioning position and positioning a third disk at the first conditioning position while the second disk is being conditioned (step 706). The method 700 further includes removing the second disk from the second conditioning position and positioning a fourth disk at the second conditioning position while the third disk is being conditioned (step 708).
In some embodiments, the various disks are each positioned by single piece of robotic equipment such as a robotic arm. In some embodiments, the various disks are positioned by different pieces of robotic equipment such as different robotic arms. In some embodiments, the at least one robotic arm uses an end effector to removably couple to each disk. The end effector can couple to an inner diameter surface of each disk rather than an outer diameter. The inner diameter surface and data stored near the inner diameter surface of a disk is less critical to performance of a hard disc drive, and as such, damage to or near the inner diameter surface is less significant. In some embodiments, the at least one robotic arm decouples the first disk from a first disk carrier before positioning the first disk at the first conditioning position. The at least one robotic arm can also decouple the second disk from a second disk carrier before positioning the second disk at the second conditioning position.
Although the above-described figures show the cooling plate 104 having just two disk holders, 124A and 124B, the cooling plate 104 can have more than two disk holders.
Various modifications and additions can be made to the embodiments disclosed without departing from the scope of this disclosure. For example, while the embodiments described above refer to particular features, the scope of this disclosure also includes embodiments having different combinations of features and embodiments that do not include all of the described features. Accordingly, the scope of the present disclosure is intended to include all such alternatives, modifications, and variations as falling within the scope of the claims, together with all equivalents thereof.
