Appeal No. 2002-1385
Application No. 09/049,861
moving the slider so that the minimum fly height area of the slider is positioned over the
free zone of the disk storage medium when landing the slider. (Id.)
Samoto discloses, as shown in Figures 1 through 3, an assembly including a
magnetic head slider 4 having a slider surface 4c. At rest, the slider surface 4c of the
magnetic head slider is press-contacted onto several grooves 8 of the landing zone 3 of
the magnetic disk 1 by the spring load of load beam 5. When the magnetic disk 1 is
rotated and driven in the direction of arrow b (Fig. 3), air flow is introduced in the arrow
d direction into the grooves 8, such that the magnetic disk slider 4 can be floated from
landing zone 3. (Samoto translation at 10-11.) As seen in Figures 1 and 2, landing
zone 3 contains a texture free zone between two sets of spiral or concentric grooves 8.
Because chip 4e is necessarily near the data recording area of the disk during reading
from or writing to the disk, we find that the minimum fly height area of the air bearing
surface of the slider is at magnetic head chip 4e; i.e., an area where the height between
a head/slider and a magnetic disk becomes minimum in the state where the head/slider
is floated off the disk. (See appellants’ spec. at 10, l. 19 - 11, l. 1.)
We thus disagree with appellants’ contention that Samoto fails to teach a “texture
free zone” in conjunction with a “landing position control unit” for moving the slider so
that the minimum fly height area of the slider is positioned over the free zone of the disk
storage medium when landing the slider.
Although appellants do not rely on the limitation, we also note that the Samoto
grooves 8 may be considered as relating to a circumferential bump zone adjacent to the
-5-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007