Carriage guides for head disk actuator assemblies

Abstract

The carriage guides for head disk actuator assemblies of the present invention include bearings and guide rails which reduce the problems associated with the wear between the bearings and rails. The bearings and guide rails of the present invention have nitrided outer contact surfaces with improved wear characteristics while the inner surfaces are not affected. Further, the bearings have radiused outer edges to reduce the point contact caused by misalignment between the bearings and the rails. The apparatus of the present invention is manufactured using an electro-polishing process to remove the amounts of embedded non-metallic surface contaminants present on the outside surface of the bearings. The present invention also provides guide rails having plasma coated ceramic layers to eliminate metal to metal contact with the bearings, to reduce the susceptibility to contact fatigue damage, to reduce the coefficient of friction between the rails and bearings, to match the thermal properties of the baseplate assembly and to eliminate flexible mounting of the center rails.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.