The Design of Machine Cluster for Loading and Unloading Slider in the Hard Disk Drive Manufacturing

摘要

This paper is aimed at demonstrating a design of a loading and unloading station cell for transporting the Slider, one of the critical components in a hard disk drive, which is attached at the end of the head gimbal arm, for electronic inspection and verification before transferring to the Head Gimbal Assembly (HGA) line. This is due to the fact that the Slider must be defect free so that a hard disk drive can perfectly perform its function as a data storage device. Therefore, each Slider must be 100% quality checked and identified as a conforming or nonconforming product and it must be done by an automated testing machine. The required yearly demand of a Slider for testing is around 160 million pieces. Therefore, a design to meet this criterion is a must and must be cost-effectiveness. A machine cluster concept is proposed to design load/unload station configuration. It is found that the proposed design is consisted of four cells which is composed of 44 automated load/unload machines with only one worker to perform feeding service to these cells.