A system and methods for manufacturing devices such as flexures using process coupons are described are described. The method including performing a test on at least one feature of a coupon, the coupon is included on an assembly sheet used in manufacturing flexures. The at least one feature is produced by a manufacturing processing step that is used to produce a portion of a flexure. And, the physical characteristics of the feature include at least one physical characteristic that is different than physical characteristics of the portion. The method also including determining the manufacturing processing step will produce an abnormal portion of a flexure based on the performed test. Further, the method includes adjusting the manufacturing processing step and manufacturing a portion of a flexure using the adjusted manufacturing processing step.

The present invention is directed to the fabrication of head sliders for use in hard disk drives, and in particular the provision and usage of electrical bond pads on the slider surface structure to accommodate needs of the fabrication process as well as slider operation within a disk drive.

A system and methods for manufacturing devices such as flexures using process coupons are described are described. The method including performing a test on at least one feature of a coupon, the coupon is included on an assembly sheet used in manufacturing flexures. The at least one feature is produced by a manufacturing processing step that is used to produce a portion of a flexure. And, the physical characteristics of the feature include at least one physical characteristic that is different than physical characteristics of the portion. The method also including determining the manufacturing processing step will produce an abnormal portion of a flexure based on the performed test. Further, the method includes adjusting the manufacturing processing step and manufacturing a portion of a flexure using the adjusted manufacturing processing step.

The present invention is directed to the fabrication of head sliders for use in hard disk drives, and in particular the provision and usage of electrical bond pads on the slider surface structure to accommodate needs of the fabrication process as well as slider operation within a disk drive.

A magnetic tape recording module having electrical lapping guides located within and adjacent to an array of magnetic read/write elements. Electrical leads connected with the electrical lapping guides are buried deep within the head build, close to the substrate so that they can pass beneath the electrical leads of the read/write elements without any capacitive coupling between the electrical lapping guide leads and the read/write element leads. The presence of the electrical lapping guides within and adjacent to the read/write element leads provides much more accurate control of read/write element stripe height during lapping.

A PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) write head is configured for measurements at the slider level and wafer-level processing stages that will allow a determination of the pole width at a position A (PWA) using the results of a resistance measurement between a main pole (MP) and surrounding write shields (WS) with a layer of conductor in the write gap and a layer of insulating material replacing the side gaps. Knowledge of an accurate value of PWA allows adjustments to be made in the processing of sliders on each rowbar which, in turn improves the capability of delivering the desired statistical variation (sigma) in the distribution of erasure widths for AC signals (EWACS) in a given design which, in turn, gives better overall performance in hard disk drive (HDD) applications.

A process for manufacturing a magnetic tape head module involves depositing over a wafer substrate electrical traces from respective electrical lapping guides (ELGs) to an area at an end of a tape head module also formed over the substrate, fabricating a closure adjacent to the tape head module where the closure terminates outside of the area at the end of the tape head module, and electrically connecting the electrical traces to an external circuit using a wire-bonding procedure, thereby electrically connecting each ELG to the external circuit. A plurality of electrical connection pads may be deposited at the area at the end of the tape head module, and each electrical trace electrically connected to one of the pads, where electrically connecting the traces to the external circuit includes wire-bonding the pads to the circuit.

An assembly for lapping multiple row bars, the assembly including a carrier having at least one carrier bond pad, multiple row bars adjacent to each other in a stack, wherein a first row bar of the stack is positioned closer to the carrier than any of the other multiple row bars of the stack and comprises at least one row bar bond pad, an electrical connection between at least one of the carrier bond pads and at least one of the row bar bond pads of the first row bar, and at least one electrical trace extending through at least two of the multiple row bars and electrically connected to at least the first row bar and one additional row bar of the stack. An outermost row bar of the stack includes an outer surface and at least one electronic lapping guide.

A slider comprises an air bearing surface having a leading edge at a first end of the air bearing surface; a trailing edge at a second end of the air bearing surface, wherein the first end is opposite to the second end; a first region adjacent to the trailing edge, wherein the first region comprises one or more transducer elements; and a second region adjacent to the first region and the leading edge. The air bearing surface has a protective overcoat layer as an outermost layer, wherein the protective overcoat layer extends across the entire air bearing surface. The air bearing surface comprises a lapped surface and a plurality of milled surfaces, wherein a surface potential difference between the lapped surface and a milled surface is 0+/−50 milliVolts or less as measured according to Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM).

Embodiments are disclosed for a method. The method includes determining a reference plane for a tape drive read-write array. The tape drive read-write array includes a first array element, a predetermined array element, and a last array element. Further, determining the reference plane is based on a first array position of the first array element and a last array position of the last array element. The method also includes capturing a position of a predetermined array element using an imaging device. The method further includes determining a deviation of the captured position from the reference plane. Additionally, the method includes generating a plot of an in-plane bow based on the deviation.