Voice coil driven positioner for coarse and fine positioning of magnetic head in multi-track tape driver

摘要

A voice coil driven positioner (100) is provided for positioning a magnetic head (170) of a tape drive relative to the tape (190) of a removable tape cartridge (180). The head positioner includes a low-mass carriage (160) that supports the head (170) on one end and the voice coil (140) on an opposed second end. A low friction guide mechanism (130,168) guides the carriage along a precision movement path that carries the head across tracks (192) of a supplied multi-track tape and simultaneously carries the voice coil through a flux field generated by a stator (120).