flash drive disassembly hints?

[jaimesummer]

Hi, Just bought one of those USB flash drives to transfer data. I would like to take the plastic covering off and replace it with wood. Been doing a lot of laminated wood projects for the holiday season and just got a nice chunk of gaboon ebony. Anybody destroyed one of these yet? Any hints would be useful before I ruin mine, a 1GB for $50 after rebate at Fry's. If not, I will probably buy a $10 one from the same manufacturer (and hope it is the same construction) to mess up and play with. thanks, jaime

[Sean Dinh]

[TWS]

The only potential issue I see is that the USB specification is fairly strict about thicknesses of material around the USB connector. I know laptops use these dimensions as guidelines to place their USB sockets. Anything thicker than specification will potentially interfere with another connector or the table top etc.

If you *never* plan to use these any place but in a desktop system and you have enough clearance around the USB connector then you should be ok. There aren't any real power issues with USB flash drives and I don't think static should be an issue except while disassembling and re-assembling. Be careful not to get finish on the connector contacts, this could rub off and gum up your computer.

If you need the specifications for clearances let me know, I'll have to dig around for them.

TWS

[d.kessell]

There was a thread on this topic here some months back. You might DAGS to find it.

Dan