Patent ID: 7293348

Claim:
A method of forming a suspension for use in a disk drive having a media disk, the method comprising: (a) pretreating a load beam with nickel to stiffen the load beam, reduce a weight of the load beam, and match a coefficient of thermal expansion of the load beam relative to conventional stainless steel load beams; (b) providing the disk drive having the media disk, an actuator for moving a slider relative to the media disk, and a suspension extending from the actuator to the slider, the suspension having a hinge and the load beam that are formed separately and welded together; (c) forming flanges on the load beam having flange cross-sectional shapes; and (d) forming ribs on the load beam having rib cross-sectional shapes that differ from the flange cross-sectional shapes, such that the ribs are different in structural form than and spaced apart from the flanges.