My budget tells me to stay at home so what could be better than to stay at my lab and do some tinkering. Then I found something worth spending my time.
If you're a father and you have children, specifically a toddler, most likely you will encounter something like this on one of your personal stuff.
Yep, that is my good old 4GB Cruzer flash drive. I have it for sometime now and even if it seems a bit obsolete by today's standards, but then, it contains important data that I'm now having trouble accessing due to it's current state. That is after my daughter munched out the usb connector itself w/c is made of a brittle piece of plastic. Most of the plastic parts we're torn off and cannot be fixed by superglue or adhesives. Now I have to resort to better alternatives for me to repair this one - I thought of maybe an improvement.
This flash drive is worthy of repair and I have to give this a thumbs up based on how it performed. This is one tough and resilient flash drive. At this condition, I tested it and it's still working, it's just i have to hold the drive securely on the usb port and it is being detected by the host. Even before this torture, it survived a full wash cycle from the watch pocket of my jeans, no data loss whatsoever.
So, first up, I inspected how this flash drive was built from the inside. Since this is made of plastic, a little prying tool reveals the innards of this flash drive.
The drive is a single chip solution which is a 4Gb memory chip itself with a couple of passive components. Since the PCB trace acts as the USB port contacts, I thought of replacing this as well using a metal usb connector.
Looking at my stash of old usb connectors, I found this crusty one. Since I don't wanna trash a better connector, i figured a little clean up will make this connector work just fine.
After some cutting and grinding using my Dremel tool, from the way it is fabricated, this connector will be perfect for my intended use.
Before I proceed any further, I have to find a new enclosure since the old plastic is not only part of the connector but the enclosure itself, hence, it needs to be replaced as well.
And for that, I happen to have the perfect candidate. This is an older flash drive (just 512Mb) barely usable these days due to a very low capacity. Looking at the enclosure, I figured this is detachable and and can be assembled back in one piece.
Here it is after teardown, just perfect for my intended purpose.
Next, I lined things up to see how the transplanted chip will fit in the new enclosure, and sure enough, it was not a perfect fit on the spot. I thought of using the usb connector from the donor chip but it was too long for the enclosure. So instead of wasting a good solid usb connector, I just modified the connector from the cable as originally planned. I just saved the old chip and connector, might be useful for future projects.
The longer cable usb connector is cut to size by using a Dremel cutting tool.
This is the final line up before soldering.
The assembly aligns perfectly with the enclosure.
After soldering, everything is nice and tight.
This is the final result. The flash drive is now usable with a better enclosure and connector.
Of course, I tested it and it still works like a charm.
I just used basic workbench tools for these project. Only special tool is the Dremel cutting tool but it can also be done by a common metal saw.
Well, that was a lot of fun, will appreciate your comments, suggestions or just your thoughts.
Have a nice weekend.
'til the next post, bye!
No comments:
Post a Comment