Manufacturing Process / Assembly Process(VCM)
As a major application of neodymium magnets, the "actuators" that drive magnetic heads inside hard disk drives can be mentioned. Such an actuator is called a voice coil motor and noted here as "VCM".
A VCM is a magnetic circuit that combines an iron yoke and magnets glued to it. Within a hard disk drive, because of the danger of the recorded data being destroyed, the introduction of even tiny particles must be avoided. Therefore, VCMs must be assembled in extreme clean rooms with no more than 100 particles of 0.5-micron size per 1 cubic feet. Therefore, Shin-Etsu uses automatic recognition of the magnets and yoke with image processing technology and positioning with robot handling in order to automate and make precise the assembly work and various related property inspections and is moving forward with contamination reduction and automation.
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