A glass disk distortion effect in an optical flying height tester

Abstract

A flying height tester has been developed for measuring low disk-to-media gap and high disk rotation speeds. The tester can obtain two-dimensional measurement data for a flying head, using an adaptive detection algorithm and signals from a color television camera. A depolarizing unit is used to suppress measurement errors caused by the photoelastic effect of the glass disk at high rotation speeds. © 1996 IEEE.