Patent ID: 7963022

Claim:
A method of swaging a head gimbal assembly (HGA) to an actuator arm, comprising: (a) positioning a tubular element on the HGA adjacent a hole in the actuator arm, such that the tubular element and the hole are coaxially aligned to form a subassembly; (b) restraining the subassembly; (c) providing a rod formed from a shape memory alloy (SMA), the SMA having a martensitic phase at a low temperature and an austenitic phase above a phase transition temperature that is higher than the low temperature, the rod having an initial diameter that is smaller than diameters of the tubular element and the hole; (d) extending the rod through the coaxially aligned tubular element and hole; (e) heating the rod to a temperature above the phase transition temperature such that the rod expands to a second diameter that is greater than the initial diameter to plastically deform the HGA and swage together the HGA and the actuator arm to form an assembly; (f) cooling the rod and removing the rod from the assembly such that the rod returns to the initial diameter; and (g) repeating steps (a) through (f) with the rod for another HGA and another actuator arm.