USB Flash drive
Versione italiana
Lately 3d printers are spreading a lot. Lowering prices and less technical difficulties allow more and more people to access to this promising and useful technology.
If You own one of these printers or You know someone owning it then You can too realize one Toti shaped USB flash drive. Here You will find a short guide to make this small gadget.
First of all You have to get the 3D model. This model, made up of 3 separate parts, can be bought at the following link: https://www.redpah.com/product/1601/toti-submarine-usb-flash-drive.
Load the three parts in your preferred slicing software. For the object presented here I used Cura.
The flash drive can be easily printed with both PLA and ABS and there's no need for supports as everything is already in the model. Of course best result can be obtained by printing at high resolutions and slow speeds. For this flash drive I used 0.12mm vertical steps, but if You wish and the printer is well calibrated You can surely halve this value.
About the infill, it's not a critical choice, but I suggest You to stay between 20% and 25%. When all the parameters have been set You can go on with the printing.
Here is a timelapse video of a printing:
If there are no issues, You can have your three parts finished in less than two hours (this depends on what parameters have been used for printing): the cap and the two halves of the case.
Remove the supports from the two halves before proceeding with the assembly. This should be an easy task:
Now get the electronics from another USB dongle. The housing should allow the use of several different electronics sizes. Place the electronics so that it protrudes about 1cm and fix it. For this last task "hot" glue is quite useful as it solidifies rapidly, but leaving enough time to careful place everything. Anyway the placement is not critical.
After fixing the electronics You can close the case gluing the two halves together. I suggest to use cyanoacrylate to make a more robust result.
Now the flash drive is ready. There could be some artifacts to fix as this printing process is not perfect, but these are usually really small and can be easily removed.
Useing the rear ring You can add a string to hang the USB flash drive to your neck or to a keyring. Below You can see some photos of the finished drive:
