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I don't know I keep getting answers to different proposals than the one that I have made, all with a significant detail changed so that the answer makes sense and the proposal sounds absurd.

In this case, I don't know how the impression could be gained that I was suggesting mounting 100 or so individual assemblies of the very same read write head currently used on mechanical drives, each with its own separate wiring harness.

Obviously, yes that would substantially increase the cost and the mass and everything else, you're right. Thanks for setting me straight about the impracticality of very different solution than the one I described, which suggested the heads could be manufactured as a single integrated unit, the way every other matrix of active elements (OLED displays, memory cells, someone else mentioned mems, etc.) is made, which might require two additional wires for selection signalling, if that, depending on what could be multiplexed. In exchange for this weight and complexity you get rid of one, possibly two extra servo joints, one possibly two extra armatures, plus all the wiring and additional control logic required for positioning this very delicate articulated assembly.

Now, if this array cannot be manufactured because no current solid state process exists that can reproduce the characteristics of a wound coil, duplicated a hundred times in a linear array of cells on silicon or some other substrate, that's an obstacle I can reason about and accept as a plausible dead end.




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