USB (flash drive) reader instead of SD Card

I am not sure what would be involved in this but would it be possible to build in a USB flash drive reader as opposed to an SD Card reader? I just think it would be more practical and a lot more durable. Has this been brought up before? Pros? Cons? Feasibility?

As far as i know the arduino acts as an usb slave as well as the flash drive does. Communication between 2 slave devices is not possible. So you would need additional hardware like this to let the arduino act like an usb host.

Using SD cards for hostless printing seems to me as the most cost efficient way.

For about the same money as a sd card connector you can get a 16Mbit serial flash memory. Would that be enough to store reasonably sized files? My printer is not finished yet so I do not have a clue of the filesize a slicer spits out. Or is the SD card more used as a convenient way to move from a remote CAD/Post processing computer to printer located elsewhere?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2014 07:01AM by Mallgan.O.

Thanks Scuba. I think that would be something cool to look into. The host board is pretty cheap. I would just rather copy files to a USB drive and plug it into the printer as opposed to an SD card which requires a special reader (integrated or external).

Mallgan: I think you are referring to integrated memory, I am talking of moving files from the PC to the printer via a USB flash drive.

I am not the best programmer so if anyone is interested in implementing this idea and making a write up I would be greatly appreciative.