Disk drive head suspension tail with ground pad outside of bonding region

A method of manufacturing a head stack assembly for a disk drive, the method comprising:

• providing an actuator including at least one actuator arm and a flexible printed circuit (FPC) that includes a plurality of electrically conductive FPC bond pads;
• attaching at least one head gimbal assembly to the at least one actuator arm, the at least one head gimbal assembly comprising a head for reading and writing data on the disk and a suspension assembly that comprises a load beam and a laminated flexure, the laminated flexure including a structural layer, a conductive layer, and a dielectric layer between the structural layer and the conductive layer, the laminated flexure including a tongue portion that connects to the read head and a flexure tail that extends to the plurality of FPC bond pads;
• aligning a terminal region of the flexure tail with the FPC so that it at least partially overlaps the FPC, the flexure tail terminal region including a plurality of flexure bond pads in electrical communication with the head, with each of the plurality of flexure bond pads being aligned with a corresponding one of the plurality of FPC bond pads;
• disposing an anisotropic conductive film between the FPC and the flexure tail terminal region;
• and
• pressing a thermode tool against a thermode tool application area of the flexure tail terminal region to bond each of the plurality of flexure bond pads to the corresponding one of the plurality of FPC bond pads by the anisotropic conductive film;
• wherein the conductive layer further comprises an exposed conductive ground pad that is disposed outside of the thermode tool application area.