JPH0240180A - Both sides head traveling mechanism for floppy disk drive - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain a stable rocking function even when an upper arm and a carriage are opened and rocked by supporting pivotally a carriage assembling body with a single guide rail in such a way that it can be rocked freely, and applying almost uniform weight balance in right and left directions around a rocking shaft. CONSTITUTION:The single guide rail 38 is fixed on a frame 10 at a position separated by a prescribed interval in parallel from the moving path of a head decided in the radial direction of a floppy disk, and the carriage 32 is supported on the guide rail 38 in such a way that it can be slided freely and also rocked freely. And the almost uniform weight balance in the right and left directions for the rocking shaft of the guide rail 38 is applied on the carriage assembling body 37 formed with the carriage 32 and the upper arm 36. Thereby, an opening function can be performed stably at the time of opening the upper arm 36 upward and the carriage 32 downward, and also, no difference of posture due to the unbalance of weight for the movement of the carriage 32 is generated in the carriage assembling body 37 even in an ordinary read/write operation.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a double-sided head feeding mechanism of a floppy disk drive, and in particular, to a double-sided head feeding mechanism of a floppy disk drive, in particular, the upper and lower heads are brought into close contact with both sides of a floppy disk placed in a loading position, respectively, so as to follow a predetermined head movement path. The present invention relates to an improvement in a double-sided head feeding mechanism that allows the upper and lower heads to move back and forth along the floppy disk, and opens the upper and lower heads when a floppy disk is attached or removed to facilitate the insertion and ejection of a disk cartridge.

[Prior Art] Various floppy disk drives have been put into practical use for reading/writing magnetic media contained in floppy disks, especially 3.5-inch floppy disks, which are built into disk cartridges.

The mainstream of this type of floppy disk drive is a double-sided head type that can read/write information from both sides of the floppy disk, and these upper and lower heads move along the head movement path defined in the radial direction of the floppy disk. Moved back and forth.

- A floppy disk drive used on a boat uses a vertical carriage whose vertical axis extends in the direction of the head movement path, and the vertical axis of this carriage is aligned with the head movement path, and the carriage is driven by a motor. etc., making reciprocating movements.

In contrast to such a vertical carriage, a horizontal carriage in which the longitudinal axis of the carriage is disposed perpendicular to the head movement path has also been proposed, and these carriages are used depending on the needs.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, in any of the above methods, the upper and lower heads must secure a space for inserting the cartridge when the disk cartridge is attached or removed. In this case, the upper head is opened upward, and the gap created at this time allows insertion and ejection of the disk cartridge.

Therefore, in the conventional device, there was a problem in that the thickness of the floppy disk drive was increased in order to secure a space for flipping up the upper head.

Such a thick floppy disk drive has the disadvantage that it cannot meet the demands for thinner computers in recent years.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned conventional problems, and its purpose is to make a floppy disk drive thinner and to reduce the amount of movement between the loading and unloading positions of a carrier that accommodates a disk cartridge. The object of the present invention is to provide an improved head feeding mechanism that can be used.

[Means for Solving the Problem] In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a frame with a single guide rail at a predetermined distance apart from a head movement path defined in the radial direction of a floppy disk. fixed,
The kite rail is characterized by having a horizontal type carriage that supports the carriage in a slidable and swingable manner.

An upper arm is swingably supported on the carriage, and a lower head and an upper head are fixed to the carriage and the upper arm, respectively.

The carriage and the upper arm are disposed below and above the carrier, and when the carriage is pushed up by a push-up portion provided on the carrier and the carrier moves in two directions from the loading position to the unloading position, It is characterized by opening the arm upward and simultaneously opening the carriage downward.

According to the present invention, the carriage and the upper arm form a carriage assembly, and this carriage assembly is pivotably supported by the single guide rail described above, and is centered around this pivot axis. As such, the carriage assembly is given an almost equal weight balance on the left and right sides,
For this reason, stable rocking operation is possible even when the upper arm and the carriage swing open and read/write as described above.

[Function] Therefore, according to the present invention, when a disk cartridge is installed or removed, the carrier moves in the vertical direction, and at the same time as the carrier moves upward from the loading position to the unloading position, the upper arm moves upward and the carriage moves downward. This double-opening action allows a thin floppy disk drive to have sufficient head opening space for installing and removing disk cartridges.

Furthermore, according to the present invention, since not only the upper arm but also the carriage performs the opening action, the required movement distance of the carrier from the loading position to the unloading position can be made smaller than before, and the carrier drive mechanism can be simplified. It is possible to configure it easily and easily.

Furthermore, as described above, the carriage assembly of the present invention has a substantially equal weight balance in the left and right directions with respect to the swing axis of the guide rail, so that the upper arm can be opened upwardly and the carriage can be opened downwardly. At times, the opening action is performed with a stable balance, and even during normal read/write operations, even with a swingable carriage assembly using a single guide rail, posture differences may occur due to the shift of the weight due to the movement of the carriage. It has the effect of never happening.

[Embodiments] Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described based on the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a cross section of a main part of a floppy disk drive incorporating a double-sided head feeding mechanism according to the present invention, and shows a state in which a disk cartridge is inserted into the floppy disk drive in a loaded state. FIG. 2 is a plan view of this embodiment, showing a state in which the carriage has been moved toward the center of the floppy disk of the disk cartridge in the loading state.

In the figure, a carrier 1 is included in the frame 10 as is well known.
2 is provided movably in the vertical direction between a loading position and an unloading position.

The vertical movement of the carrier 12 is controlled by a slide plate or the like, but since this carrier mechanism is well known in the art, explanation and detailed illustrations will be omitted in this embodiment.

The carrier 12 itself has a frame shape, and a disk cartridge 14 can be detachably mounted therein. The disk cartridge 14 shown in the embodiment has three
．． It is a 5-inch disk cartridge, and as is well known, a floppy disk 16 is rotatably housed inside the cartridge.

At the floppy disk loading position shown,
The disk cartridge 14 is positioned by a plurality of reference pins 18, 20 provided on the frame 10.

As shown in FIG. 2, a pulley 22 that rotates integrally with the rotation hub of the floppy disk 16 is rotatably provided at approximately the center of the floppy disk drive.
By rotating the floppy disk 16, a desired rotation effect is applied to the floppy disk 16.

Upper and lower heads are in close contact with both sides of the floppy disk 16, and the upper and lower heads are indicated by reference numerals 28 and 30, respectively, in the figure. As is well known, these upper and lower heads 28 and 30 must integrally reciprocate along a head movement path 100 (FIG. 2) defined in the radial direction of the floppy disk 16, and the present invention provides an improved double-sided head transport mechanism for moving the two lower heads 28,30.

In order to perform reciprocating movement along the head movement path 100 described above while supporting both heads 28 and 30, the lower head 3
0 is mounted and fixed on one end of the carriage 32 through a plate 34, and the upper head 28 is mounted on an upper arm 3 that is swingably supported with respect to the carriage 32.
It is fixed at 6.

The carriage 32 is slidably and swingably supported on a guide rail 38, and in the present invention, the guide rail 38 is connected to the head moving path 1 described above.
It consists of a single guide rail fixed to the frame 10 parallel to 00 and spaced apart from each other by a predetermined distance. Although not shown in detail, this guide rail 38 has both ends connected to the frame 10.
In the present invention, it serves as a swing axis for the carriage 32, which will be described later, and enables the carriage and the upper arm to open in both directions, which is a feature of the present invention.

The carriage 32 is formed by bending a flat plate in the embodiment, and is arranged under the carrier 14 and is fixed to a part of the rack plate 40 by meshing with the pinion 44 of the feed motor 42. , the upper and lower heads 28 and 30 are moved along the head movement path 100 via the carriage 32 and the upper arm 36 by the rotation of the feed motor 42.
You can move back and forth along the

As described above, the lower head 30 is fixed to a part of the carriage 32, and in the embodiment, the lower head 30 is fixed to the plate 34 via the lower head substrate 45 by adhesive or the like. There is. The other end of the carriage 32 bypasses the carrier 12 and extends upward, and one end thereof forms an upper arm fixing portion 32a.

On the other hand, the upper arm 36 supports the two heads 28 by means of a two-head base plate 46, and has an upper arm mounting spring 48 fixed to the other end formed of a leaf spring. The free end of this upper arm fixing spring 48 extends to the upper arm fixing portion 32a, and one end side is firmly fixed by an arm presser 50.

Therefore, the upper arm 36 is swingably supported by the carriage 32 on the upper surface side of the carrier 12.

As is clear from FIG. 2, one end of the arm legs 36a and 36b provided on both sides of the upper arm 36 extends to the upper surface of the upper arm fixing portion 32a, and the carriage 32
The upper arm 36 is correctly positioned relative to the upper arm 36. Further, two arm springs 52 held by the upper arm fixing part 32a are applied between the carriage 32 and the upper arm 36, and have already biased the upper arm 36 toward the carriage 32 side, and the upper and lower heads 28, 30 are in close contact with both sides of the floppy disk 16 in the loading state.

In the present invention, the carriage 32 and the upper arm 36 form a carriage assembly 37, and this carriage assembly 37 is supported so as to be swingable about the swing axis of the guide rail 38.

A characteristic feature of the present invention is that the carriage assembly 37 is arranged with equal weight balance on the left and right sides around the swing axis of the guide rail 38, and for this reason, it is possible to There is an advantage that errors due to gravity do not occur in the movement of the carriage assembly 37, particularly the carriage 32 and the upper arm 36, even during read/write operations according to 28.30 or during opening operations when the disk cartridge 14 is attached or removed.

In the present invention, in order to obtain the equal weight balance, the guide rail 38 is used when designing the carriage and the upper arm.
The weight distribution is calculated around the head 28.3, and even in the illustrated embodiment, the weight of the head 28.3 increases normally in a cantilevered manner.
The carriage 3 is located on the opposite side of the guide rail 38 with respect to the 0 side.
2 and the upper arm 36 are provided with a large protrusion or overhang to obtain the weight balance described above.

However, in this embodiment, a sufficient weight balance cannot be obtained with such design consideration alone, and for this reason, in this embodiment, the lower head is attached by extending one end of the plate 34 and latching it. A tongue piece 34a is formed, and this hanging tongue piece 34
The balance spring force of balance spring 39.41 is applied to H.

This balance spring 39,41 is firmly fixed at one end to a spring holder 43 fixed to the frame 10, and its free end engages with the locking tongue 34a.

Therefore, in the loading state shown in FIG. However, when the carriage assembly 37 swings about the guide rail 38 for some reason from this state, the balance springs 39.41 apply the desired return force to the carriage assembly 37, and the carriage assembly 37 It is possible to achieve a configuration with a nearly uniform weight balance as a whole.

The present invention is characterized in that when the carrier 12 moves upward from the loading position to the unloading position, the upper arm 36 is opened upward and the carriage 32 is simultaneously opened downward. In this embodiment, the carrier 12 is provided with a push-up portion, and the push-up portion in this embodiment is formed of a carriage push-up spring 54 fixed to the upper surface side of the carriage 12.

The carriage thrust spring 54 has an oval shape, and its long side is fixed to the upper surface of the carrier 12, and its short side is extended close to the lower surface side of the upper arm fixing portion 32a of the carriage 32.

Therefore, this thrust spring 54 can thrust the carriage 32 upwardly at a position opposite to the upper and lower heads 28, 30 with respect to the guide rail 38.

Further, according to this embodiment, the upper arm 36 is provided with an upper arm height adjuster 56, and the carrier 12 is provided with an upper arm height adjuster 56.
When the carrier 12 moves upward to the unloading position, the upper surface of the carrier 12 directly contacts the upper arm height adjuster 56, and the upper arm 36 moves upward against the arm spring 52.

The embodiment of the present invention has the above configuration, and its operation will be explained below.

In FIG. 1 described above, the carriage 32 does not come into contact with the carriage thrusting spring 54, and the upper arm 36 also does not come into contact with the upper arm height adjuster 56, so the carriage 32 and the upper arm 36 do not come into contact with each other. A closing biasing force is applied by an arm spring 52 between them.

Therefore, the upper and lower heads 28, 30 are in close contact with the upper and lower surfaces of the floppy disk 16 at a predetermined pressure in the loading position shown.

On the other hand, when the disk cartridge 14 is taken out from the carrier 12, the carrier 12 moves upward from the loading position shown in FIG. 1 to the unloading position shown in FIG. 3, as is well known. When the disk cartridge 14 is taken out at this unloading position, the upper and lower heads 28 and 30 move the floppy disk 1
6 and also from the ejection area of the disk cartridge 14.

Conventionally, when the disk cartridge 14 moves upward and separates from the lower head 30, the upper head 28
However, in such a conventional device, the disk cartridge 14 had to be moved a long distance in the upward direction. A drawback has arisen in that the thickness of the floppy disk increases.

The present invention eliminates such conventional drawbacks, and as is clear from FIG. 3, when the carrier 12 is moved upward, the carriage thrust spring 54 first fixes the upper arm of the carriage 32 Push up the portion 32a upward. Following this, the carrier 12 itself also contacts the upper arm height adjuster 56 and pushes it upward.

As is clear from the unloading position shown in FIG.
The upward thrust causes the carriage 32 to swing clockwise in the figure about the guide rail 38.

In the figure, when the carriage 32 opens downward, the latching tongue piece 34a pushes down the lower balance spring 39 as shown, and the balance force at this time provides an urging force to return the carriage 32 upward.

As the carriage 32 pushes up, the lower head 30 retracts downward from the loading position shown in FIG. A space is created in which the cartridge 14 can be taken out from the carrier 12 without coming into contact with the lower head 30.

Of course, at this time, the upper arm 36 opens upward due to the upper arm height adjuster 56 coming into contact with the carrier 12 as described above, and the upper head 28 is not sufficiently retracted from the disk cartridge 14 as in the conventional case. can.

Therefore, according to the present invention, both the above-mentioned heads 28.30
The upward double-opening action has the effect of creating sufficient space for taking out the disk cartridge 14 by reducing the amount of upward movement of the carrier 12.

In the above-mentioned embodiment, the carriage push-up spring 54 having spring properties is used to move the carriage 32 upward and open the lower head 30 downward, but of course, in the present invention, this carriage push-up spring 54 The upper arm 36 can have any other shape, and the raised portion
It is also possible to directly push up the carriage 32 and use this pushing up force as it is to swing the carriage 32.

For this reason, according to the present invention, the position of the raised portion is provided at a position opposite to the upper and lower heads with respect to the guide rail.

As mentioned above, the carriage assembly 37 according to the present invention
The left and right weight balance is approximately equal using the guide rail 3B as a swinging wheel using its own designed weight distribution and the biasing force of a balance spring as necessary, and for this reason, even during read/write. There is an advantage that the movement of the carriage assembly 37 does not cause a difference in posture or the like.

[Effects of the Invention] As explained above, according to the present invention, when unloading a disc cartridge, the carrier opens the carriage downward and the upper arm opens upward, so this bidirectional opening action causes the disc cartridge to move vertically. Since the carrier can be separated from the head and the amount of movement of the carrier from the loading position to the unloading position can be reduced, the thickness of the floppy disk can be reduced without creating a large amount of extra empty space within the floppy disk frame. It has the advantage of being possible.

Furthermore, since the carriage assembly of the present invention has a substantially equal weight balance on the left and right sides of the swing axis, no extra external force is applied to the movement of the carriage and upper arm during swing or read/write. There is an advantage that there is no

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of the main parts of a preferred embodiment of a floppy disk drive incorporating the double-sided head feeding mechanism according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a plan view of the main parts of FIG. 1, and FIG. FIG. 3 is a sectional view of a main part showing a state when the loading state shown in the figure is moved to an unloading state. 6... Upper arm 7... Carriage assembly 8... Guide rail 9.40... Balance spring 4... Carriage thrust spring 00... Head moving path

Claims (1)

[Claims] It has a carrier in which a disk cartridge containing a floppy disk is removably attached and can take a loading position and an unloading position by moving up and down, and the floppy disk can be loaded in the loaded state. In a double-sided head feeding mechanism for a floppy disk drive, in which upper and lower heads that are in close contact with both surfaces can integrally move back and forth along a head movement path defined in the radial direction of the floppy disk, a single guide rail fixed to the frame at a position; a carriage disposed below the carrier, slidably and swingably supported by the guide rail, and having a lower head mounted on a part thereof; an upper arm that is swingably supported by the carriage on the upper surface side of the carrier and has an upper head fixed to it; a push-up portion capable of pushing upward; the carriage carrying the upper and lower heads and the upper arm form a carriage assembly, and the carriage assembly has a substantially equal weight balance with the guide rail as a swing axis; and, when the carrier is moved upward from the loading position to the unloading position, the thrusting part opens the upper arm upward and swings the carriage about the guide rail as a fulcrum, thereby opening the carriage downward. Double-sided head feeding mechanism for floppy disk drives.