This is the first time I’ve posted, so hopefully I don’t do anything atrociously wrong!
Usually when I think “It can’t be that hard” I am sorely mistaken… But in this case, I was able to take apart a USBC to microSD adapter, and simply solder the points between the micro SD pins to a slightly modified SD card slot housing! (Kind of ironic using a micro SD to SD adapter in the pictures, but whatever)
Looks good so long as those tiny soldier joints hold!
Could you share the parts you used and maybe a brief overview of what you did to take them apart?
Yeah, I added some solder mask afterwards. I feel decently confident in it, but of course time will tell.
USB C to micro SD:
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMIGKfM
Full SD Board:
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mPJtoq6
The USB C to microSD was definitely the easier of the two. There were two halves (black and yellow) that I just pulled apart with some pliers, and both of them just popped off the PCB pretty easily, and then I just clipped the pins that touch the micro SD card shorter.
The full SD had to be de-soldered from the board it came on, and I proceeded to take off the metal shielding and trim the plastic down a bit so that it would fit in the expansion slot size. I wish I took a picture of the final trimmed shape, but it didn’t occur to me until after I had friction fit it into my 3D printed part.
And then soldering the two together was pretty easy, it’s basically a one to one pin location across the two, except for the ground pins, as there are two on the full size SD, and MicroSD only has one, so I bridged the two together on the SD and soldered the bridge onto the MicroSD ground pin
Thank you very much.
Last questions:
Would you be willing to share or sell either the files for the expansion card housing or the whole assembled card? I think answering those will preempt most of the questions you will get in the future on this.
Of course! I made this Maker World page with the files! Thank you for your help!
Awesome! I might build one of these some time so I can put gcode files onto my SD card for my 3D printer… shame I’ll have to use another computer to print the shell to get that all started.
Haha, classic catch 22 there. And honestly, thanks again, I’m glad it seems useful!
would you be willing to make this for me? I can’t solder
Excellent!
Sorry, but I didn’t really intend to make more than the one personally. I would honestly get pretty bored having to do it again haha, my brain is weird like that
Maybe it’s time the framework community put together some kind of group of people who would be willing to make all these kinds of DIY projects for other people (for at least the cost of materials & shipping, or free if someone is so inclined). There are some of who sell our own products, but there isn’t really anywhere for people like you to go if you want these smaller projects made…
no worres i was probably going to wait for the FW expansion card to be released.
yeah that’d be nice however, i’ve started to learn how to 3d print and eventually hopefully i’ll be able to solder using this but who knows
I see, yeah, soldering can be very difficult without two hands, or full mobility of both. I often wish I had at least 3 hands when I solder stuff.
Here is a full size sd card reader expansion card solution without soldering:
Awesome! how did you solve the heat issue? I know you said it couldn’t fit in a USB-A card but how about a displayport expansion card as isn’t that bigger?
I didn’t, as I mentioned:
That wouldn’t make a difference, as the sd card slot occupies almost the full width of the expansion card.
You are going to need precise metal cutting tools to work with any of the standard sized original expansion card casings.
