Tolerance Analysis of the Pitch Static Attitude of a Thermally Assisted Magnetic Recording System With an Optical Fiber and Prism

In this paper, we propose a thermally assisted magnetic recording (TAMR) system with an optical fiber and specially designed prism attachment. The TAMR system utilizes an optical fiber and prism to facilitate the delivery of light to the slider and media. However, problems such as increasing suspension stiffness were encountered. Using an optical fiber increases the TAMR suspension stiffness and affects the pitch torque of the system. The pitch torque affects the flying height (FH), which can lead to slider-disk contact. Therefore, we investigated the stiffness of the TAMR suspension and the relationship between FH and the pitch static attitude (PSA). The various factors affecting the FH loss and the environmental conditions were also investigated. Finally, to compensate the large pitch stiffness and prevent slider-disk contact, the air bearing surface (ABS) of the TAMR system was optimized for robust slider performance, and the tolerance of the TAMR system was analyzed for the PSA considering various parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, operating conditions and manufacturing errors. The final PSA tolerances of the conventional and TAMR suspension were calculated. These values were 1.58° and 0.37°, respectively. The sensitivity of the optimal PSA design was decreased by about 21.5%. The PSA tolerance using the optimal design was 0.47°. This indicates that the tolerance of the optimal model is larger than that of original model, which was about 21.3%.