Appeal No. 1997-1162
Application 08/200,455
rotor arrangement as recited in claims 14 and 15. All primary
references disclose a pair of ball bearing units including
inner and outer races mounted between the spindle and the
sleeve having inner and outer races. Thus, first, none of
these references discloses that the sleeve mounting the
bearings includes a pair of ball-running grooves to eliminate
the outer races of the ball bearings. Second, none of the
primary references discloses that the spindle is a stepped
shaft. The Examiner relies on Voll and Fruge for these two
differences.
Voll discloses a rotating spindle disk drive unit wherein
a fixed one-piece outer bush 4 has a pair of ball-running
grooves, eliminating the ball bearing outer races. The
spindle 1 is a stepped shaft where the large-diameter shaft
portion has a ball-running groove on the outer peripheral
surface, eliminating the inner race for one set of ball
bearings. The small-diameter shaft portion has an inner race
mounted on it and the second set of ball bearings are disposed
between the inner race and the ball-running groove of the
outer bush 4. Voll discloses (translation, pages 4-5): "The
elimination of an inner raceway and the one-piece form of the
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