Dynamic Characteristics of a One-Unit Ball-Rod-Spring Balancer

The traditional ball-type automatic balancer consisting of several balls moving on a circular orbit is widely used in the optical disk drive industry for vibration reduction. Under proper working conditions, the balls can counterbalance the imbalance of a disk by positioning to appropriate angles relative to the mass center of the disk. This particular equilibrium position is referred to as the perfect balancing position. The proper working conditions are closely related to the stability of the perfect balancing position, which, in turn, depends on the parameters of the system, such as rotational speed, imbalance ratio, and damping ratios. To achieve perfect balancing, the system parameters must lie in the stable region of the perfect balancing position in the parameter space. An automatic balancer with a wider stable region can tolerate a larger amount of variations in the system parameters and hence is more robust. In this study, we propose a modified ball-type balancer composed of several ball-rod-spring units. In each unit, the ball can slide along the rod while the rod rotates freely about the spindle. The ball’s displacement along the rod is restrained by a radial spring. The additional degree of freedom in the radial direction could broaden the stable region of the perfect balancing position. To understand the fundamental properties of the modified balancer, we studied the dynamic characteristics of a modified balancer with one ball-rod-spring unit. Specifically, we built a theoretical model for an optical disk drive packed with the modified balancer, and investigated how equilibrium positions and the associated stability are related to primary system parameters and the effects of the stiffness of the radial spring on the stable region of the perfect balancing position. Numerical results indicate that the ball-rod-spring balancer may possess a larger stable region of the perfect balancing position compared to the traditional fixed-orbit balancer.