USB Building Blocks

Minion found an awesome and simple project on the interwebs for replacing the case of a USB thumb drive with one made from LEGO blocks.  The people on the interwebs used an X-ACTO knife, but we have CNC machines at our disposal and decided to use those instead.

 We started with an unassuming LEGO block.  Minion liked this red one.

Minion took some basic measurements, and I used Dolphin PartMaster to generate some code to mill out the bottom and add an opening for the USB connector.  I also thinned the walls of the block down to about 0.030 to make the thumb drive guts fit more easily.

We also made a bottom plate to cover things up, and had to remove two of the nubs to make room for the USB connector.  Because we thinned the walls of the lego block, we will have to glue this on.

Only a little trimming with the X-Acto knife was required.  Here are the pieces and tools ready for assembly.

A Sandisk 4GB thumb drive...

 placed inside a lego block...

with the bottom plate glued on...

== awesomeness.  We'll see if we can't get some pictures of the CNC machining next time when we make a blue one.