Slicing induced ABS-cambering in thin film pico sliders

For catamaran type sliders used in rigid disk recording heads, the desired air bearing surface (ABS) topography was achieved by concluding the slider machining process with a lapping or nanogrinding step. However, with the introduction of ion milled ABS contours, the final step is a slicing process for slider separation. This process causes a stress induced ridge formation contributing to a negative camber in the air bearing surface (ABS). This paper investigates the magnitude of this effect for various machining parameters. The influence of the dicing blade grain size and the binder as well as of the feed rate and cutting speed are investigated. As a result, the ridge increases with larger diamond grain size, whereas a variation of either the blade binder, the feed rate, or the cutting speed is not significantly influencing the ridge dimensions.