Parametric Study of Swage Ball for Hard Disk Drive Swaging Process Using Finite Element Method

Abstract

Ball swaging is a general method in head stack assembly process to permanently attach Head Gimbal Assemblies (HGA) on the actuator arm. In this process, the swage ball is guided by a pin through the inner base plate’s hole in order to deform the base plate to tightly attach to the actuator arm. However, the loosing problem can still be found quite often in the current swaging process. This research focuses on ball sizes and the number of balls used which currently no theoretical guidance in choosing the both parameters. Besides, the best combination of the both parameters can give the best swaging performance. The three-dimensional finite element model is created and analyzed to estimate the swaging performance according to the variation of both parameters by using the tightening torque and the fixing distance of base plate to determine the quality of the ball swaging process. The results from finite element method are treated as the sampling points which are used to create the interpolation in order to increase the considered cases to cover all happening cases from both parameters. After that, a searching algorithm is implemented to determine the most suitable ball size and the number of ball used for the process. By using the finite element analysis together with the interpolation and a searching algorithm, the optimal design parameters for a complex problem with multiple conditions of consideration can be easily found.

Simulation and Analysis of One-time Forming Process of Automobile Steering Ball Head

“…During the analog simulation, velocity field, equivalent stress strain, load -stroke relationship is analyzed as follows [11][12][13][14]: Fig.6, the left and right female dies are closed first, and then male die goes downward after the start of ball pin extrusion forming. Under the compression of male die, the blank moves downward, generating downward initial velocity field.…”