Method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider

Abstract

A method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider suppresses the production of damaged areas during lapping, reduces the lapping time, produces high-quality products, and is suited to mass production. The method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider laps an end surface of a row bar, which has been produced by cutting a wafer substrate on which magnetic sensor parts have been formed into strips, to expose an end surface of magnetic sensor parts to a floating surface, wherein a high processing rate is set in an initial part of a lapping process that laps the row bar and a lower processing rate is set in a later part of the lapping process.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider, and in particular to a method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider characterized by a lapping method used on a floating surface of the thin-film magnetic head slider. [0003] 2. Related Art [0004] In the manufacturing process of a thin-film magnetic head slider, after magnetic sensor parts for reading and writing have been formed on a wafer substrate, the wafer substrate is cut into strips in accordance with the arrangement of elements formed on the wafer substrate and a lapping process is then carried out on the end surfaces of a row bar of cut-out sliders. The process that laps the end surface of a row bar exposes the magnetic sensor parts to the floating surface, with the lapping also having an object of producing predetermined characteristics for the magnetic sensor parts. [0005]FIG. 4 is a diagram useful in ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015] The present invention was conceived to solve the problem described above, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider that suppresses the occurrence of damaged areas during lapping, does not increase the lapping time, produces high-quality products, and is suited to mass production.

[0020] The entire lapping process on the row bar may be carried out using a single lapping device so that the lapping process can be carried out efficiently.

[0021] With the method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider according to the present invention, it is possible to effectively lap thin-film magnetic head sliders, to suppress the occurrence of damaged areas and distorted parts, and to carry out lapping with high quality, thereby manufacturing non-defective thin-film magnetic head sliders.

Problems solved by technology

Due to the construction of a thin-film magnetic head slider, there are problems such as electrical short circuits easily occurring at the magnetic sensor parts and deterioration occurring in the output of the magnetic sensor parts due to damaged areas (positions where fine scratches have been formed by the lapping) and / or distorted parts being formed.

However, since the processing time is increased when the processing rate of the lapping process is decreased, there is a limit on how slow the processing rate can be made when products need to be mass produced.

Accordingly, when such products are manufactured, an even longer processing time is required, resulting in the problem of mass-production being hindered.

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