LaserCut Mendel Shays X Carriage

This is a page to describe modifications I made to the TechZone Laser-Cut Mendel Kit for the X-axis carriage assembly.

The primary modification is in 6 places, I used threaded inserts into the wood so that I could screw machine screws into it. There were two places, one with 4 screws, one with 2 screws, that I felt were going to be problematic to access once the carriage was assembled onto the X-axis rails.

Here is one such location:

These screw heads would be partly or completely inaccessible once the X-carriage is mounted on the rails. So my answer was to use these threaded inserts:

If you're in the US, you can order from a place like McMaster and get metric inserts. I bought mine at a local hardware store (roughly $1 each), but was only to get SAE inserts, so these are 6-32 thread.

I deliberately made the holes for these inserts a little too small so that they would hold tight. Also, the inserts were slightly longer than the thickness of the wood I was screwing them into. So I screwed them up to the point that the bottom of the screwdriver slot was even with the top of the wood, then usewd a Dremel tool to cut the inserts off flush with the top surface of the wood. Here's a photo after doing this.

Also, at the two screw locations on the top of the X-carriage where the extruder attaches, I also used these threaded inserts. You can see one of the screws in the photo above that is screwed into one, but I don't have a photo showing the insert itself.