Material of Expansion Cards

[Heath_Blandford]

o/

Looking to find out more about the expansion card metal material. It it aluminum?

Thinking of laser etching them to make them stand out a bit more and maybe add some sort of texture to them so I can tell them apart when digging in my bag.

Cheers.

[Jay_Vogt]

I believe they are aluminum. The texture feels the same between the laptop itself and the cards. They also get much colder than I’d expect plastic to be.

[Heath_Blandford]

Not the best picture. But, here’s the result. Decided to just make the USB-A card a sacrifice for testing. Looks to be just fine!

Exciting stuff!

[Jeff_Craig]

I’m planning on doing some etching of some cards myself, can you share some information about your laser and the settings you used for this etch?

[Joshua_Ham]

I etched mine last year and I think I just used the normal etching settings and plunger?

Color Coded Expansion Cards

So my school got a laser engraver/ cutter this year. I had never used it before but it is really easy. You get your image in inkscape, you want it to be black and white and then make it into a bitmap. Then you print it using the laser and just put it on image mode. I used the plunger focus method. This was on an epilog.

[Heath_Blandford]

@Jeff_Craig

I’m planning on doing some etching of some cards myself, can you share some information about your laser and the settings you used for this etch?

Hey @Jeff_Craig, so sorry for the late response here.

There are some relative differences in power intensity of CO2 lasers. But I ran that at 50mm/s speed at a max of 45% power.

I’m also currently working (albeit slowly) on a 3D printed fixture that will allow you to put an expansion card in, zero in the laser, and then you’re set to rock and roll.

I’ll follow up later on with this new fixture and see if it’s something the community is into.

cheers