Thin Hard Drive with 2-Piece-Casing and Ground Pin Standoff to Reduce ESD Damage to Stacked PCBA's

A method for manufacturing a flash-memory device comprising:

• soldering flash-memory chips onto both surfaces of a printed-circuit board (PCB) and soldering a controller chip to the PCB;
• forming a PCB assembly by soldering a connector to an edge of the PCB, the connector for carrying signals from an external computer to the controller chip to instruct the controller chip to read blocks of data from the flash-memory chips;
• forming an upper case by molding plastic;
• forming case-grounding pin recesses, plastic standoff pedestals, and engagement slots on the upper case when forming the upper case;
• forming a lower case by molding plastic;
• fitting the PCB assembly into the upper case wherein alignment holes on the PCB assembly are aligned over the plastic standoff pedestals and wherein notches on the PCB assembly expose the case-grounding pin recesses;
• placing dual-axis case-grounding pins into the case-grounding pin recesses along a primary axis wherein secondary axis washers on the dual-axis case-grounding pins are aligned along a secondary axis that includes the alignment holes and the plastic standoff pedestals;
• connecting the secondary axis washers to the alignment holes and to the plastic standoff pedestals to make electrical connection from the dual-axis case-grounding pins through the alignment holes to a ground of the PCB to form a sub-assembly of the PCB assembly and the upper case and the dual-axis case-grounding pins;
• aligning the lower case to the sub-assembly and attaching the lower case to the upper case to encapsulate the PCB assembly,
• whereby the flash-memory device is assembled with dual-axis case-grounding pins.

A flash-memory device comprising:

• upper case means for partially encasing the flash-memory device;
• lower case means for partially encasing the flash-memory device;
• a printed-circuit board assembly (PCBA) that comprises:
• circuit board means for connecting chips with wiring traces;
• a plurality of flash-memory chip means for storing blocks of data, the plurality of flash-memory chip means being mounted to the circuit board means, wherein the plurality of flash-memory chip means are block-addressable and not randomly-addressable;
• controller chip means, mounted to the circuit board means, for controlling access to the plurality of flash-memory chip means, the controller chip means comprising an input/output interface means for interfacing to an external computer, and processing unit means for accessing the plurality of flash-memory chip means in response to commands from the external computer received by the input/output interface means;
• and
• connector means, mounted to the circuit board means, for connecting the controller chip means to the external computer;
• dual-axis case-grounding pin means for conducting static-electric currents from the upper case means to the PCBA, the dual-axis case-grounding pin means contacting the upper case means at a primary axis, and making electrical contact to the circuit board means at a secondary axis, wherein the primary axis and the secondary axis are parallel to each other and perpendicular to a major surface of the circuit board means;
• wherein the upper case means is attached to the lower case means during assembly with the PCBA between the upper case means and the lower case means, with the connector means passing through an opening between the upper case means and the lower case means.