Encasing a Kingston USB Flash Drive in Urethane

USB Memory Stick face-lift

I have wanted to improve my Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 for a while now. I didn't like the plastic case for it, and the silver paint had almost all flaked off, resulting in an ugly gray surface.
The flash drive The naked board

Photos!

So while I was trying to make optical scattering standards, I cast my usb-drive into urethane. I milled the edges off of two plastic cuvettes, then taped them together and sprayed mold-release into the resulting container.
Disposable plastic cuvette

I cast the urethane in the mold, with the USB drive (held by it's original cover) hanging down into the urethane.
The USB drive held by the cover
The USB flash drive inserted into a cuvette

After pouring in the urethane, I put the whole thing under a vacuum while it cast.
Weighing out urethane for casting Smooth on crystal clear urethane Items being cast under vacuum Vacuum enclosure

I pulled it out the following monday morning, and the urethane was still gummy. It was approximately the hardness of a (new) Staedtler eraser. The following day it hardened to the hardness that I expected, harder than plexi-glas.
Variety of cast items

Then I milled the casting down using our Taig micromill, and milled my family-crest into the surface. Taig micromill in enclosure

To create the g-code for my family crest, I took a digital photo of both my ring and my father's ring, and using Inkscape I traced the crest (using only straight line-segments). I exported a DXF file from Inkscape, and then used matlab to convert the DXF file to g-code, since the CAM program I use to drive the mill doesn't do a very good job of importing dxf files. Here is the dxf-to-gcode matlab script.

I used a really small, broken-off re-pointed drill bit from Lee Valley Tools to mill the pattern. Milling the urethane

It turned out well.
USB drive with crest