SD Card slot replacement

[yoavz]

Hi,
I'm a new user to the Rapsberry Pi, received mine about two weeks ago.
Due to an unfortunate accident my Raspberri Pi met the floor, SD card side down.
Due to that unfortunate accident, my SD card slot plastic is now broken.
If I hold the card in place by hand it works. I tried the suggested solutions on the forum, I super-glued a piece of credit card to the housing, it holds the card but the connection is not very good... It works partially...
I have thru-hole and SMT soldering experience and I wish to replace the SD card slot completely.

Now all I'm missing is the part-number for the SD card slot.

If someone here, maybe someone from the original designers, can help me with a part-number It'll be highly appreciated.

Thank you very much,
Yoav.

[mahjongg]

many posts about this issue can be found by a quick search.

[yoavz]

Hi,
All I found, as I mentioned in my original post, is the plastic piece glued to the old one solution.

If you have another solution and it's on the forum, I'd appreciate a link...

Thanks!

[mahjongg]

No... gluing a piece of plastic on top is the generic solution, unless you have the piece of plastic that broke of, and you can glue that back.

The one thing you must be careful about is not to lock up the insertion switch with glue, otherwise it should be all good.

[yoavz]

Hi,
I was careful not to glue the insertion switch.

But yet, it's not sitting well and the connection works only some times...

Can someone from the raspberry pi developers team help me with it?

Thank you.

[IanH1982]

if you have a look, there's a thread somewhere in the "power users" section about someone who replaced the sd slot with a micro sd adapter.

He basically soldered short lengths of wire from the existing slot to a micro sd to sd adapter. It could be that this is the easiest/most practical solution for you

[yoavz]

Hi,

I saw the solution of soldering thin wires to a MicroSD/SD adapter.

I'm considering it, but I prefer to change the reader itself...

Yoav.

[mstombs]

The SD card holder in my PI looks remarkably similar to the top one here:-

http://zk-tek.tw/main.php?SubCategoryID=69&CategoryID=1

Part NO：40FBH-13*T-114L

SD CARD, PCB MOUNT, SMT, FEMALE (SHORT CARD)



http://zk-tek.tw/admin/pdf/40FB-005.pdf

I think you will find it difficult to buy the odd-one - need to persuade Farnell to make it a stock item!

But you should really try to ask for a few free samples, just to check it is right first!

[RaTTuS]

http://www.instructables.com/id/Shrink- ... Card-Slot/

[AndrewS]

Apart from the write-protect pins (not used by the Pi) and card-detect pins, isn't it fairly likely that most SD card slots have the same pinout / pin spacing? In which case you might as well just go for a more robust metal SD card slot, if you're going to be removing the existing slot?

[Pieter-Jan5000]

Any updates on this? I need a SD card slot replacement as well ... Can't find the right one ...

[alandouglas]

Hi,
All I found, as I mentioned in my original post, is the plastic piece glued to the old one solution.

If you have another solution and it's on the forum, I'd appreciate a link...

Thanks!

I managed to break my SD card slot and found a solution that works so far.

First I glued the broken pieces back on with superglue (which is not strong enough to hold the card on its own). I was very careful while gluing not to interfere with the wire contacts underneath the retainer.
Fortunately I had some 'Plastruct' 6mm L shaped channel and used this to make two supporting pieces. I marked them for cutting as shown in RepairTrimming.jpg

RepairTrimming.jpg (14.85 KiB) Viewed 6742 times

. A smaller sized channel would be better which you can get from http://www.alwayshobbies.com reference AFS-6 Plastruct 4.6 x 4.6mm L channel. The plastic channel was not exactly square on the inside of the ‘L’ so I filed it so that the inner edge was parallel to the outside face. This was much easier to do before cutting off the required length from the channel. I then glued them in place using Maplin plastic adhesive for rigid PVC etc. The result is shown in SDRepair.jpg.

SDRepair.jpg (7.24 KiB) Viewed 6742 times

[Synthetic_Darkness]

@alandouglas : I love that kinda ingenuity.

[yoavz]

Ok,
I've ordered some SD reader slots off ebay & other sites - none of them aligned correctly with the current one.

Any one succeeded with this replacement?

Yoav.

[exartemarte]

Ok,
I've ordered some SD reader slots off ebay & other sites - none of them aligned correctly with the current one.

Any one succeeded with this replacement?

Yoav.

I've done two (so far ...), one with a socket from Farnell and one with a virtually identical part bought on eBay. The first one is described in this thread.