Slider having integrated lapping guides

摘要

A slider of a magnetic hard disk drive has one or more electric lapping guides in immediate proximity to the read/write stack of the slider. The lapping guides remain part of the slider during its operation. In the preferred embodiment, two essentially identical lapping guides are symmetrically placed on a slider back. One write head terminal is utilized to conductively access the two lapping guides on one side such that only one additional terminal has to be placed on the slider back together with corresponding leads. The placement of lapping guides on the slider back face provides for an economic lapping of individual sliders with increased precision and reliability regardless of any lapping plane skew.