Shear mode multilayered collocated micro-actuator for dual-stage servo controllers in disk drives

An actuator arm for a disk drive comprising:

• an arm beam having first and second ends, and having a primary actuator for coarse positioning of a read/write head at said first end, and a head gimbal assembly at said second end which provides secondary actuation, said head gimbal assembly including:
• a load beam a longitudinal axis;
• a flexure, a portion of said flexure being attached to said lad beam;
• a slider including a read/write head;
• and
• a collocated microactuator which connects between said flexure and said slider for providing pure or nearly pure lateral movement to said slider in a plane of motion that includes the longitudinal axis, said collocated microactuator being a shear mode piezoelectric motor, the microactuator is disposed between the slider and the load beam along an axis disposed orthogonal to the longitudinal axis.

A disk drive with collocated secondary position actuation comprising:

• an enclosure including at least one rotatable data storage disk having data tracks;
• one or more actuator arms, each arm having a primary actuator for coarse positions of said actuator arm relative to said data tracks, and a head gimbal assembly, which provides secondary actuation;
• said head gimbal assembly including:
• a load beam a longitudinal axis;
• a flexure, a portion of said flexure being attached to said load beam a slider including a read/write head;
• and
• a collocated microactuator which connected between said flexure and said slider for providing pure or nearly pure lateral movement to said slider in a plane of motion that includes the longitudinal axis, said collocated microactuator being a shear mode piezoelectric motor, the microactuator is disposed between the slider and the load beam along an axis disposed orthogonal to the longitudinal axis.