Actuator assembly including a circuit assembly and a damper therefor

Abstract

Apparatus and method for damping operational vibration modes of an actuator assembly. The actuator assembly preferably supports a data transducing head adjacent a storage medium in a servo track writing environment. The actuator assembly further supports a circuit assembly comprising circuit board, card or other circuit portion to facilitate electrical communication with the data transducing head. A damping assembly is interposed between the circuit assembly and the actuator assembly to mechanically decouple the circuit assembly from the actuator assembly. Preferably, the damper assembly comprises one or more rigid damper plates and one or more viscoelastic layers therebetween to provide constrain layer damping. As desired, the plates can be provided with progressively larger thickness dimensions in a direction away from the actuator assembly.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.