A study of static-dissipative tweezers for handling giant magneto-resistive recording heads

The goal of this paper is to share information on the study of static-dissipative tweezers for use in giant magneto-resistive recording heads. There are two tests, one to measure the amount of energy of transient currents discharged from tweezers and the other to determine the voltage of a head gimbal assembly (HGA) at which a pair of grounded tweezers can damage the GMR head when in contact. These experiments are important because the energy of transient current discharged from tweezers directly affects the magnetic performance of the GMR head. The results of the two tests correlate relatively well. Most dissipative ceramic tweezers performed very well. Black polymer tweezers with 1.3% carbon, and metal impregnated ceramic tweezers, also performed very well. One type of dissipative copolymer tweezers was found to behave like a conductor. Some carbon-loaded polymer tweezers and stainless steel tweezers have the worst ESD performances.