HP Desktop SD/MS/Xd/CF Card reader project

thingiverse

THINGS NEEDED(for the entire project): Card reader soldering iron, solder + basic soldering skills heat shrink hot glue gun Exacto knife So I began this project by scavenging one of those multi-card readers from an old hp prebuilt, what I found is that it's actually wired for regular USB operation despite having a connector that only connects to a motherboard on it, simply chop the stock connector off, find a USB cable you don't care about, strip, solder and heat shrink (Put heat shrink on before soldering and make sure wires are long enough so that the soldering iron heat won't shrink the heat shrink) the wires between the USB cable and card reader, plug into your computer and it should detect it and install a driver if your wiring is correct(only tested on windows but I assume it works with mac as well) and voila, a cheap (or sometimes free) card reader, now that you have your working card reader you'll notice it's pretty ugly without a box, so I designed one that fits it perfectly PRINT NOTES: -Print vertically (backside of the box on the build plate) or you'll need a ton of supports to stop the top from drooping -Slicer program may display an "extraneous surfaces" error, ignore this, the box prints fine After printing I cut 2 holes in the back of the box, one big enough for the connector on the board of the card to fit through and another one just slightly bigger than a hot glue gun nozzle, I simply fed the cord through, connected it, and used the two holes to pump hot glue into the box(MAKE SURE WIRING IS CORRECT AND TEST BEFORE DOING THIS!!!) I think I used around 5 gluesticks total, now the card reader is securely mounted inside the box and looks + works great