So, I have a bunch of 4 GB thumb drives for various tasks, but I got tired of having to pop each one in to find out what’s was on it. Enter GLOWFORGE! I used the Brilliance laser marking spray, the text available in the GF app, imported the treble clef for the music one, and used the settings I find in this post:
Here are the results.
Now if I can find some larger capacity drives, I’ll be set.
Ingenious! They look awesome. Might need to market those!
I was thinking, " Who uses thumb drives anymore?" 
I think they have some neat uses, like sending wedding photos out on or some such, where you could do a bulk job of 20+ at time. Definitely will save you time on figuring out if you have the right one when they all look the same like that!
I think part of the joy of owning a laser is that you can do projects just for fun and just for yourself without the need to please anyone else or set up a retail business. I know there are quite a lot of forum members that bought theirs as a tool for funsies!
If you work in tech, sometimes it’s the only way to safely and securely transfer large files.
I have a couple of these identical ones, but most of what I use frequently came from Microcenter. The ones posted above, we had pre-printed and handed out at events, I had a bucket full for my speaking engagements but gave them all to our marketing rep.
I’ve got a couple of 128GB ones, which were primarily used for sharing a 80GB virtual machine image of the appliances I sold. We would share it with customers so they could play around on their own systems vs. messing around with stuff in production. Most recently, I had to use an old 4GB one to upgrade my ex’s Mac OS, as her machine would not connect to the App Store.
I’ve seen lots of ‘cases’ just not a lot of actual thumb drives engraved! I don’t get out much either…not a FB user (maybe once a month), and no twitter, etc. for me. Makes my life much easier to avoid these platforms. I ‘do’ get on Etsy occasionally if i’m looking for a file.
I am one of this group. And this project is exactly the kind of thing I love to do: Identify a problem; find a solution.
The Glowforge scratches a creative itch for me that contributes to my personal wellbeing. The laser seems to inject dopamine directly into my brain.
Great job, @djfb !
I’ve got so many of the Microcenter ones floating around. They are very useful for when the printers decide to go offline and we can’t send scans to the computers. We can scan directly to the thumb drive.
Also, my husband’s work still uses them for data transfers, we’ve got a bag of them in the closet he has to take to clients when he goes on trips.
Sounds like my former life as well.
I used them often to scan vs. to the computers themselves, so much simpler.
I just had to check. New tank-based printer does not have USB port, only SD card slot. No matter, have plenty of those as well - although the scan function to my MBP seems to work just fine…
Amen! That describes me exactly too.
I have a couple specific needs. I have a2010 MacBook Air running an older system for the soul purpose of using the overdrive software with my library. This version of the MacOS lets me use the overdrive app for Mac to download digital audiobooks to the computer. I use the drive to take them from that to my new-ish iMac and use audiobook builder app to convert each book to a single .m4b instead of 99 .mp3 tracks per disk. The sizes are to big to email and it’s just easier to put them on the drive and move them. I also am not a big fan of Windows, but I have need of it for my vectric aspire software for my cnc. Again, it’s just easier to move files from the Mac to windows this way, for me anyway.
Me too. I could have just used a sharpie to mark them, but I find myself feeling like the USA vs the Soviet Union in the early days of the space race. The USA spent millions on developing a pen that can write in space. The Soviets just used a pencil. 
I think these are cool!
I digitize classic movies and put them on flash drives, usually with a classic cartoon and maybe an old serial, all in “blocks”. That way, the theater can simply plug the drive into their central computer and send it to the projector. I use a lot of flash drives…
Smart, and they look great!
I have a couple of 2Tb thumb drives and a 1Tb Micro SD card
What passion thumb drives spark! There is no topic that is unknown to this forum. Great engraves, BTW!
My CNC uses a controller that I place thumbdrives in…
They look great. Beautiful black engraving images.
I have a few that had a color anodized cover. I always forget the size so I engraved the size on them.
