Intri-Plex Assigned Patent

Intri-Plex Technologies, Inc., Santa Barbara, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,675,306) developed by six co-inventors for “debris reducing disk clamp for disk drives.”

The co-inventors are Robert J. Tench, Goleta, CA, Adam D. Sutton, Pleasanton, CA, David M. Erlach, Frederic C. Petersen,  Ryan J. Schmidt, and Paul W. Smith, Santa Barbara, CA.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A disk clamp for clamping a plurality of disks within a disk drive has a single fastening hole located at its symmetrical center sized to pass the shaft of a screw having a head diameter larger than the fastening hole. The screw fastens the disk clamp to a motor hub supporting the plurality of disks. The disk clamp has a moat around the fastening hole, at a maximum diameter that is smaller than the head diameter of the head on the fastening screw. The moat may be circular, have spike trenches angled toward the fastening hole, or be spiral. The diameter of the spiral moat decreases in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction toward the fastening hole. The midsection of the disk which the screw head covers is biased at a negative angle toward the fastening hole forcing particles generated during assembly toward the fastening hole of the disk clamp.”

The patent application was filed on April 12, 2012 (13/445,726).