Structural design of small form factor swing arm type actuators with thermal stability

The present state of the design of swing arm actuators for optical disc drives is to obtain the high efficient dynamic characteristics within a very compact volume. As a necessary consequence, the need of the small form factor (SFF) storage device has been arisen as major interests in the information storage technology. In this paper, we suggest the miniaturized swing arm type actuator that has high efficient dynamic characteristics for SFF optical disk drive (ODD). For the operating mechanism, it uses a tracking electromagnetic (EM) circuit for a focusing motion together. Moreover, due to the size constraint, the thermal stability of optical head is important. Therefore, the actuator is designed to emit the heat, which is generated by optical pick-up, along the actuator body easily. Initial model is designed based on the topology optimization method considering the thermal conductivity. Then, the structural parts of the actuator are modified to maintain the high sensitivity and to have wide control bandwidth by the design of experiments method (DOE) and new concept of decreasing mass and inertia. Finally, a swing arm type actuator for SFF ODD is suggested and its dynamic characteristics are verified.