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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsEric Alan Eckberg, Dale Ernest Goodman, Steven Alf Hanssen, Kirk Barrows Price
Estimating the term…
A gasket for a disk drive system that seals the connector port for the actuator flex cable to the disk drive housing which is designed to also provide electrical ground contact from the disk drive housing to the actuator flex cable ground lead. In accordance with the new gasket disclosed herein, grounding of the actuator flex cable ground lead to the disk drive housing is accomplished without need of additional fasteners, or additional process steps in assembly of the disk drive.
A grounding gasket for an actuator flex cable in a disk drive system comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
Drawings are temporarily unavailable. Open the PDF at USPTO
Disposition of constructional parts in the apparatus, e.g. of power supply, of modules: the apparatus comprising a single recording/reproducing device
Using flat record carriers, e.g. disc, card: using rotating discs
Information storage based on relative movement between record carrier and transducer
Term ended 31 Jul 2017 (estimated)
USPTO file history isn’t available for this patent, so only indexed dates are shown.
1. Field of the Invention This invention relates in general to disk drives, and in particular to a gasket frame for grounding an actuator flex cable and method of using the same, wherein the actuator flex cable gasket grounds the actuator flex cable to the disk drive casting.
2. Description of Related Art
Moving magnetic storage devices, especially magnetic disk drives, are the memory devices of choice. This is due to their expanded non-volatile memory storage capability combined with a relatively low cost.
For a fuller understanding of the nature and advantages of the present invention, as well as the preferred mode of use, reference should be made to the following detailed description read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
FIG. 1 is a plan view of the disk drive of the present invention illustrating the relative placement of the components;
FIG. 2 is an exploded plan view of the disk drive of the present invention illustrating the relative placement of components including the flex cable bracket and the gasket seal for the actuator electronics connector port in the disk drive housing;
This invention is described in a preferred embodiment in the following description with reference to the Figures, in which like numbers represent the same or similar elements. While this invention is described in terms of the best mode for achieving this invention's objectives, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that variations may be accomplished in view of these teachings without deviating from the spirit or scope of the invention.
FIG. 1 shows a disk drive system designated by the general reference number 10. The lid 14 of the disk drive is shown exploded. In operation, the lid would be disposed on top of the housing 12.
The disk drive comprises one or more magnetic disks 21. The disks 21 may be conventional particulate or thin film recording disks, which are capable of storing digital data in concentric tracks. In a preferred embodiment, both sides of the disks 21 are available for storage, and it will be recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art that the disk drive 10 may include any number of such disks 21.