Balance clip holder feature on a spindle motor with nickel-Teflon coating on balance clips for reducing friction during clip adjustment in balance process

• Main Authors: Hanlon, Andrew, Fu, Ta-Chang, Wong, Stanley
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 16.12.2004

A spindle motor is equipped with pre-installed adjustable balance clips on a stainless steel motor hub to facilitate better balance correction. A balance clip holder feature is formed in the hub and has grooves to hold the balance clips. The balance clip holder can be an integrally formed part of the hub, or it can be a separate piece that is assembled to the hub before the complete motor is assembled. In addition, the balance clips are provided with an improved coating to reduce friction during adjustment of the clips in the balance process. Each clip has a coating of nickel-Teflon to achieve a better coating quality and cleanliness over prior art designs. The nickel-Teflon combination yields unexpected results, such as a significantly smoother surface with more uniform coating thickness, and significantly less particle sloughing to reduce contamination.