Sandisk 256 MB Cruzer Micro to Lego Jumpdrive
Inspired by this Lego USB I went out and got the Sandisk Micro 256 MB which was $15 after rebate at Staples (and I think Circuit City too). After looking at it I realized that the metal of the usb plug is the same piece that makes up the body and it would be more than just popping off the enclosure. At first I was going to give up on the little project but I was bored and it was raining so I grabbed my new Dremel and went on with it.
So I started with this:
You can kind of see that it is a metal body surrounded by a clear plastic casing. This turned out to be a soft plastic that I could cut with an exacto knife. So I cut this off and was left with just the metal enclosure seen here in the clamp:
You can see that there is no more plastic and a small slit at the base of the USB plug. This was done with my metal cutting Dremel head. I wanted to slice the metal enslosure at the base of the USB plug and try and slide the metal enclosure off and be left with the smaller components. I clamped it in and slit it all the way around carefully not to cut too deep into the white component under that metal. I also made a slit lengthwise from the front to back of the metal on the small side so that I could pry the metal open. I cut a little deep and hit some green board but nothing was damaged *phew*. After this was pried off I had the components and the plastic covering molded onto the board. It was still a little wide and long to fit into the 4-long block so that plastic had to go:
With an exacto knife I could slit the sides of the plastic further and began to peel it off. It was pretty attached to the front part here so I had to slit it where it connected at the white piece:
Once this was off I had just the component board:
It was still a little wide so I had to sand down some of the board and some of the lego walls and it finally fit, very snuggly:
Then I put on the base of the lego (black):
The cap fits on very loosely so I have this to lock it on good and tight:
Some notes:
I did pretty much the same thing as the link listed above told. The only difference was the pain of removing the insides which was mainly what I described here, but the micro allowed me to use a 4-long block instead of the 6-long which makes it smaller.
I also dremeled out just enough of the side of the usb to fit the plug out instead of taking out the entire thing, minor improvment.
Since it was so small it was very snug so I did not need to secure it with anything.
The back wall had been thinned so much to make it fit that you can still see the blue LED from the Micro through the wall, kinda cool.
You should try it.
-Dan