Club Manufactures USB Connectors

Maker Club President Ray Altenberg came up with a plan for his club to make USB cables.

“I came up with the idea of creating the USBs because I’ve had some experience with it and created them before, and so I suggested that we do it because they’re pretty cheap per person and they get a cool project in the end,” Alterberg explained.

Senior club member Alexander Zerkle said, “It was fun, but I still haven’t completely finished it yet because the little wires are hard to work with.”

The project was started in November, but it’s a time-consuming process because they have only 10 minutes a day to work on them together. “There are other things more fun to do in your free time than struggle with tiny wires,” said Zerkle.

Creating the USBs wasn’t without challenges. Placing the wires correctly was difficult. Some bad diagrams temporarily made the cables malfunction. Zerkle said, “There was one point when I attached it backwards so it would drain power when you tried to use it to charge and it’s really hard to put the wires into the connectors which just took a really long time.”

However, according to Altenberg, the procedure itself is “fine,” and though getting the wire into the housing was difficult for members at first, they have since mastered the procedure.

The cables can be used for personal use or for phones or anything that uses micro USBs. Altenberg said, “It’s nothing really special, but the project’s point was the process of making it, not what the cables can be used for.”

“The idea [of Maker Club] is to build and create things, and we host a number of products and build things throughout the year,” said Altenberg.