Data Storage Exploratory Tech. Magnetism Materials Analysis Nanoscale Sci. Almaden Home IBM Research Home Feedback Lubricants for motors to start a new paragraph and the break tag to force a line break. Disks will be spinning faster in the future, placing greater demands on motor bearing reliability.
Special grease is needed for disk drives because the bearings are in a sealed environment.
Anything that evaporates from the grease may end up as a contaminant on the disk. We developed ultrastable greases to enable reliable ball bearing operation at higher rotation rates at 10,000 rpm and higher through understanding of the oil oxidation mechanism. The disk on which the magnetic data is stored are mounted on the motor with spacer rings in between them. The ball bearings are visible above and below the copper coil windings. A representative ball bearing is shown below.