Patent ID: 7855099

Claim:
A method for manufacturing a flash-memory device comprising: forming contact pads on an upper surface of a printed-circuit board (PCB); forming a PCB assembly by soldering a flash-memory chip onto a lower surface of the PCB and soldering a controller chip to the lower surface of the PCB; wherein the contact pads are 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 locking tabs on the upper case when forming the upper case; forming a lower case by molding plastic, the lower case having an outside surface as a largest external surface of the lower case; forming engagement slots on the lower case when forming the lower case; forming supporting ribs on the lower case when forming the lower case, the supporting ribs for supporting the PCB assembly at a slanted angle within the lower case wherein the upper and lower surfaces of the PCB are not parallel with the outside surface of the lower case; fitting the PCB assembly into the upper case to form a sub-assembly of the PCB assembly and the upper case; sliding the upper case into the lower case until the locking tabs on the upper case snap into the engagement slots on the lower case to secure the upper case to the lower case; wherein the upper and lower surfaces of the PCB are not parallel with the outside surface of the lower case; whereby the PCB assembly is at the slanted angle within the lower case when the flash-memory device is assembled using a snap-together process.