Plastic Housing for USB Stick

Hello,

We need to convert a custom interface to USB. This requires only a small 
electronic PCB. The most elegant solution would be to fit the PCB into 
one of the common USB stick housings.
We found that Samtec makes USB connectors that can be soldered directly 
to PCB boards, as the ones used in USB sticks.

What we still look for is a plastic housing, like the ones used for the 
common memory sticks. Is anybody aware of a manufacturer of a standard 
plastic housing for that, or is it absolutely necessary to make your own 
mould (our quantities hardly justify that)?


Thanks, Heiner

Heiner Karlin wrote:

> common memory sticks. Is anybody aware of a manufacturer of a standard
> plastic housing for that, or is it absolutely necessary to make your own
> mould (our quantities hardly justify that)?

Are you prepared to spend approximately $50 on casting compounds
sufficient to make about 20-30 of these? Do you have a housing you can
copy, assuming you do not care about the IP issues? Or, could you
hand-carve/SLA/SLS/FDM a housing of your own to use as a mold pattern?

If so, visit <http://www.smooth-on.com/>. I suggest OOMOO 25 as the
rubber mold compound ($22.00 trial kit is more than enough to make
several molds for an object this size) and one of the SC-3xx series
resins for the casting (SC-300, 305, 310, 320, 321, 322, see datasheets
at <http://www.smooth-on.com/liqplas.htm>). They also have transparent
resins if that is what you need. Making an object with these relatively
loose tolerances is not challenging.

Hello,

Thanks for this suggestion.

There are two problems, first, we don't need thousands of this, but a 
few hundred, so making them by hand is not an option.

Second, we are going to sell this product, so it needs to look professional.

Making a simple mould, even in China, for this part would cost approx. 
5000 USD, so, at 100 pieces, 50 USD per piece, which is a little too 
much. We need to be able to sell the complete part for less than 100 USD.

(Since it is an accessory for a more expensive product we manufacture, 
we still might make our own mould, if no finished part is available)


Heiner

Heiner Karlin wrote:

> There are two problems, first, we don't need thousands of this, but a
> few hundred, so making them by hand is not an option.

Well, a few hundred is still in the range that I would consider making
them by hand, but I suppose we differ on this point. Just an
observation, however: you can make a single mold do say 10 of each
side. Hence 100 pieces is 10 pulls of the mold, which is to say about
13 hours cure time depending on the resin in use.

> Second, we are going to sell this product, so it needs to look professional.

You - and your customer - will not be able to tell the difference
between a rubber-mold castable urethane prototype and an
injection-molded ABS part. (Different material characteristics,
obviously, but in the hand or to the eye they simply look like
"plastic").

On Sun, 04 Jun 2006 23:25:59 +0200, the renowned Heiner Karlin
<waldstadt04@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Hello,
>
>We need to convert a custom interface to USB. This requires only a small 
>electronic PCB. The most elegant solution would be to fit the PCB into 
>one of the common USB stick housings.
>We found that Samtec makes USB connectors that can be soldered directly 
>to PCB boards, as the ones used in USB sticks.
>
>What we still look for is a plastic housing, like the ones used for the 
>common memory sticks. Is anybody aware of a manufacturer of a standard 
>plastic housing for that, or is it absolutely necessary to make your own 
>mould (our quantities hardly justify that)?
>
>
>Thanks, Heiner

You can probably get small obsolete USB sticks or SD card readers for
next to nothing. Maybe buy 100 of them and rework the housings or
arrange to buy 5,000 from a manufacturer without markings (and keep
the leftovers on the shelf). They hand those things out for free these
days as premiums etc. 


Best regards, 
Spehro Pefhany
-- 
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Heiner Karlin wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We need to convert a custom interface to USB. This requires only a small
> electronic PCB. The most elegant solution would be to fit the PCB into
> one of the common USB stick housings.
> We found that Samtec makes USB connectors that can be soldered directly
> to PCB boards, as the ones used in USB sticks.
>
> What we still look for is a plastic housing, like the ones used for the
> common memory sticks. Is anybody aware of a manufacturer of a standard
> plastic housing for that, or is it absolutely necessary to make your own
> mould (our quantities hardly justify that)?
>
>
> Thanks, Heiner

Many places make customized USB memory sticks, custom logos as well as
custom shapes, as an example, see

http://www.customusb.com/products-customshapes.html

they have  minimum order of 200 for custom shapes so I think they can
deal with your ballpark quantity cheaply.

I suspect a place like this that is specifically setup to do only USB
sticks will be able to get you a USB shell very quickly (with logo) and
much more cheaply as compared to a generic do anything modeling shop,
(let us know if this true!). It should also look very professional.

steve

On Sun, 2006-06-04 at 23:25 +0200, Heiner Karlin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We need to convert a custom interface to USB. This requires only a small 
> electronic PCB. The most elegant solution would be to fit the PCB into 
> one of the common USB stick housings.
> We found that Samtec makes USB connectors that can be soldered directly 
> to PCB boards, as the ones used in USB sticks.
> 
> What we still look for is a plastic housing, like the ones used for the 
> common memory sticks. Is anybody aware of a manufacturer of a standard 
> plastic housing for that, or is it absolutely necessary to make your own 
> mould (our quantities hardly justify that)?

Hi Heiner,

I found a company, New Age Enclosures
(http://www.newageenclosures.com/default.aspx), that can supply the
enclosures from stock--so no NRE if you are OK with their housing.  Of
course, you can add bells and whistles and do custom stuff too.

FYI, I have no affiliation with the company nor have I seen the sample I
requested yet.  I know it took me a while to find them so I can maybe
save you some time.  The biggest problem was the search terms to use as
most of the stuff I tried took me to USB assemblies.  Now that you have
their web page maybe you can use some of their terminology to find
others.

Check them out and let me know how it works out--I'd be interested.

Cheers,

James.

Hello James,

Without having had a sample in hand, I  would say this is exactly what I 
was looking for. Thank you very much!

I also tried Google before asking, and even found a company that makes 
plastic housings for MultiMedia Cards, but not for USB sticks.

So, indeed, you saved us a lot of time.

Thanks a lot.

Heiner