Hans H Zappe, Age 891374 Hillcrest Ct, San Jose, CA 95120

5805375, Sep 8, 1998

Aug 22, 1996

8/703111

Long-Sheng Fan - San Jose CA
Robert Edward Fontana - San Jose CA
Tomotake Furuhata - Yokohama, JP
Timothy Clark Reiley - Los Gatos CA
Hans Helmut Zappe - San Jose CA

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G11B 5596
H02N 1100

360 7812

A microfabricated wobble motor with a positioning arm attached to the wobble motor rotor acts as a fine positioner with bidirectional movement. The primary application is a rotary actuator for the read/write head in a very small magnetic recording disk drive. An integrated head-arm assembly is attached at one end to the rotor of the wobble motor. The other end of the head-arm assembly has a head carrier that is maintained in contact with the disk. Head position error information is read from the disk and used to provide control signals to each of the stator elements. The stator elements are sequentially addressed by applying a voltage from a driver circuit. This causes the rotor to be electrostatically attracted to the activated stators, so that the rotor is movable bidirectionally. The read/write head can thus be moved bidirectionally to any of the data tracks on the disk and maintained on a desired data track for reading or writing data. The fine positioner also includes a digital control system where each of the stator elements is represented by an address, and the movement of the rotor is controlled by incrementing or decrementing the stator address in an address register.

5364742, Nov 15, 1994

Sep 21, 1992

7/948189

Hans H. Zappe - San Jose CA

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

G03C 500
B44C 122

430317

In the fabrication of a free-standing miniaturized structure in a range of about 10 to 20. mu. m thick, a method based on a sacrificial system includes the steps of selecting a substrate material, depositing on the substrate material a sacrificial layer of material and patterning the sacrificial layer to define a shape. A photoresist layer of material is deposited on the sacrificial layer and patterned by contrast-enhanced photolithography to form a photoresist mold. Upon the mold there is plated a metallic layer of material. The electroplated structure conforms to the resist profile and can have a thickness many times that of conventional polysilicon microstructures. The photoresist mold and the sacrificial layer are thereafter dissolved using etchants to form a free standing metallic structure in a range of about 10 to 20. mu. m thick, with vertical to lateral aspect ratios of 9:1 to 10:1 or more.

5539267, Jul 23, 1996

Jul 21, 1994

2/378490

Long-Sheng Fan - San Jose CA
Robert E. Fontana - San Jose CA
Archibald C. Munce - San Jose CA
Timothy C. Reiley - Los Gatos CA
Hans H. Zappe - San Jose CA

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

H02N 100
H02K 706
G11B 1702

310309

A motor based on the wobble motor provides pure rotary motion and can be used as a spindle motor for very small disk drives. The primary components of the motor are fabricated using thin film processes. The rotor has inner and outer rings that are interconnected by flexible members, such as semicircularly-shaped spring elements, with the rings and flexible members being formed of the same material. The rotor resides within the wobble motor stator elements that are circumferentially spaced on a substrate. The inner rotor ring is supported by a bearing structure that may be a ball bearing assembly or a pin bearing comprising a post and a restraining cap. The outer rotor ring functions as the wobble motor rotor and rolls around the inside of the stator as the stator elements are sequentially electrostatically activated. The flexible members act as a transmission to convert the wobble motion of the outer rotor ring to pure rotary motion of the inner rotor ring. The motor can function as a disk drive spindle motor by attachment of a data recording disk to the inner rotor ring and use of appropriate control circuitry to drive the motor at constant speed.