Stray field and DC remanent suppression in high-speed magnetic tape duplicator apparatus having an array of permanent magnets productive of a spatially varying transfer field

In anhysteretic magnetic tape duplicating equipment of the type in which a master tape and a slave tape are subjected to several cycles of a spatially varying magnetic transfer field while moving at a relatively high speed through an information-transfer zone, the improvement comprising:

• a) a rotatable capstan having a circumferential surface at least a portion of which is disposed in the information-transfer zone;
• b) means for transporting the slave tape and the master tape through the information-transfer zone while partially wrapped around said circumferential surface of said capstan;
• c) an array of an odd number of alternatingly polarized permanent magnets of equal pole strength situated in side by side relationship in the information-transfer zone with alternating flux-issuing pole faces and flux-returning pole faces aimed at said circumferential surface of said capstan, the effect of which is to subject the master tape and the slave tape to an alternating transfer magnetic field in the direction that the slave tape and the master tape are moving through the information-transfer zone;
• and
• d) first and second terminator magnets, disposed, respectively, at opposite ends of said array, similarly polarized with respect to each other and opposite the polarization of the end magnets in said array, each of said first and second terminator magnets having a magnetic moment that is less than the magnetic moment of each magnet in said array, the effect of each terminator magnet being primarily (1) to suppress stray magnetic fields associated with the end magnet in the array, and (2), in combination with the odd number of permanent magnets in said array, to suppress DC residual magnetization in the slave tape.