Trends and Mechanical Issues in Optical Disk Drives

Recent trends and the effect of mechanical vibrations in optical disk drives are reviewed in this paper. The transition from CD drives to high density DVD drives and the development of writable optical disk drives require tighter mechanical tolerance. The demand for faster access time and higher data transfer rate also leads to critical mechanical problems to limit the tracking and focusing servo performances. The current mechanical issues in the optical disk drives and various technologies to overcome the mechanical problems are introduced. Vibrations of disk-spindle system, actuator and suspension designs of the optical pick-up, and general mechanical designs for the fast and stable access mechanism are considered.