Floppy Drive Alignment

With floppy drives being available for less than 10$, why would you want to invest in an alignment machine? They have become disposable. It is a lot more cost effective to replace it with a new one than it is to try and repair the misaligned one. Same with keyboards and mice. Other than cleaning them on occasion, if something goes wrong, just chunk it and buy a new one...

I've never seen a floppy disk alignment machine.

On a technical level, you use an oscilloscope and a alignment disk to achieve the proper pattern.

I have worked in Electronics manufacturing for over 25 years.
From a manufacturing standpoint, I guarantee that the floppy drive manufactures DO NOT perform 100% alignment on completed drives.

Their manufacturing process are designed to produce drives with the heads aligned properly as part of the assembly process.
IF they do any more thana quick electrical check of the assembled drive, I would be very surprised.

At most, their quality audit would use a reference disk, and verify that performance is within allowed tolerances.

Chas

The floppy drive alignment machine is a poor Oriental making $2.00 a week. Is your time not worth anything.

And they don't use a machine they use an alignment disk.

I have seen floppy drives as cheap as $4.00.

Unless this is a vendeta, junkit and start over.

Lee

This is an educated guess based on my years of manufacturing process and test design.

The head arm is feed from a parts feeder, and placed into a cradle that grasps the arm into a precision alignment.
This is most often accomplished using keyingholes in the part itself.

The head is then feed and oriented onto the arm for attachment.
Again, alignment pins, holes, or marks are used.
The head is then secured to the arm.

The key here is how precise is the manufacturing process for the head itself.
The head is likely made in a fully automated work-cell with the location of the head gap tightly controlled and monitored using Statistical Process Control.

12 years ago, when we all used 5 1/4" floppy drives, the heads were larger, and the precision handling equipment required was cost prohibitive. Back then, heads were aligned by hand on each drive made.
The cost of drives was a lot higher then too.

With the increased volume of precision mechanisms, and the sheer volume ofCD, floppy and hard drives made, the precision handling equipment has become more cost effective to use.
Plus, higher density media requires more precise alignment.

Chas

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