Nayan's Flash Drive
For this, our second project, we were tasked with creating a case for a flash drive. I had not used a flash drive for probably about 5 years, but I did not let that discourage me! I decided to combine the tools I learned from the dice tower and use the laser cutter to make a press-fit piece of acrylic so I could see the inside of the USB. In total there are 3 pieces for this case (excluding screws). A bottom piece machined out of aluminum, a top piece machined out of aluminum (I was actually able to use the leftovers from the first piece), and the afformentioned lasercut piece of acrylic.
This is the drawing for the base of the flash drive. The design and drawing came from Will the teacher. It is pretty basic, just large enough to comfortably house the USB, and short enough that the excess material on the bottom could be used to create a top.
This is the bottom piece of machined aluminum. The USB fits very snugly into it, as in it is near impossible to take off. The process started with making an engineering drawing which we sent to the machine shop manager. He then helped us program it into a mill that was CNC converted. It took about 15-20 minutes in all to make the shape. We used a 1/8th bit for the larger cuts, then switched to a 1/16th bit for the holes and the tighter corners. We used a bandsaw and mill to cut it to height.
This is the engineering drawing for the top of the case. Note the place for a keychain addition. That did not make the final product due to materials constraints. We would have needed to use much more material and time to include that piece, so we made the decision to remove it.
Here we can see the full deconstructed flash drive. On the left the base, in the middle the top with the acrylic piece removed, and on the right the small piece of acrylic. To assemble, the acrylic is pressed into the top, and 4 screws are used to attach the top to the base. The holes in the top are noticeably larger than the tapped holes in the base to allow for the screws to fit with some uncertainty. We determined the hole sizes based on a tap chart.
Finished product! Still a nice small package, relatively light. I filed off any burrs from machining so it is smooth. I think its super cool to see inside the USB but still have metal on the top.