I-002

Design Analysis of a Grating Interferometer Sensor for HDD Servo-Track Writing


Authors: Harry Garner, Kok-Meng Lee, Lin Guo
Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Maxtor Corporation

Abstract
A grating interferometer system for the measurement of a hard disk drive actuator arm during the servo-track writing process has been designed and analyzed. Attractive features of this grating interferometer based system over current measurement systems such as the mechanical and optical push-pin techniques are that it does not require contact with the actuator arm and only needs a single servo loop to control the actuator arm position. In this paper, the theory necessary for the design of a grating interferometer based system to perform a non-contact direct measurement of a hard disk drive actuator arm for use in servo-track writing will be presented. First, the theoretical background related to the linear type grating interferometer is presented, and this theory is extended to the measurement of the angular displacement of a hard disk drive actuator arm using a linear grating. Finally, experimental results with a prototype grating interferometer measurement system are presented and discussed.

Harry Garner
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
(404) 894-8169
hgarner@sun1.hu.edu

http://sun1.hu.edu/hdg or http://lics05.marc.gatech.edu