Seagate Visit

On 19 January 2010, my coursemates and I had an industrial visit again to Penang Island, but this time we were visit to Seagate to understand more about the application of the optical and surface metrology subject. This time, the trip was brought by my FYP supervisor, Professor Dr Mani Maran Ratnam, who is one of two professors in my school, and the Deputy Dean of my school as well.

Seagate is the world largest hard disc read/write head manufacturer, producing about 70% of the market needs. As the same as Motorola visit, we were not allowed to take photo inside the factory, however we were still allowed to bring hand phone inside.

All of us 26 people, including Dr Mani Maran, were divided into 2 groups to visit the factory. Although 13 people in a group is still consider a big number in a group, but the situation is better compared to the visit to Motorola.

Seagate analyze the flatness of the thin film magnetic recording head by using two methods, one is by Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and another one is by Slider Level Crown (SLC). The scale of scanning is up to several microns. Most of the head are measured by SLC method, as Seagate has more SLC machine than AFM machine. Since the capacity of production is so huge, till they are impossible to do measurement on every single head. Therefore, sampling method is applied where only several samples are taken to do the measurement, and calculation is done to determine whether the corresponding batch of product is reliable or not.

After the visit, we were treated lunch at their cafeteria.

Their cafeteria is quite comfortable also, having a mini “water fall” at the center of cafeteria. This can help to release stress...

Photo session after meal: Chee Peng, Chun Yang, Jit Ming, and Chin Hau.

Overall, Seagate is a more organized company, where the machines are arranged in order, and nothing looks messy as well in the office. The visit was quite a fruitful one, and as usual, we end up with a quiz that needs us to pass up within 1 month.