I recently purchased the inventables dust shoe attachment and more recently the cnc4newbies Z axis. I decided I didn’t want to cut up the old X carve dust shoe mounts that get attached to the Z makerslide and I didn’t want to drill and tap into the x carriage. This is what I came up with this. It is easily removable.
First I tried a piece of T slot extrusion and found they fit 1/4-20 bolt heads, but not the dust shoe parts. I found online a piece of square aluminum tube with a 1/16" wall thickness, and found Lowes had them in stock.
The two pieces are about 6.5 inches long. I drilled two holes for M5 bolts and used a couple insertion nuts ( the flat kind) for the clamping part. Not seen are a couple pieces of aluminum to help minimize the angle the bolt flexes to.
I cut the slot on my router table with an old 1/4" ( dull) router bit in about 4 passes. I set up two fences on the opposite side of the work to help guide it over the bit with a push stick. If I were making another one, I’d make provisions for the bolt heads on the outside by drilling large holes. I used a lock washer near the bolt head and a lock nut at the other side to ensure things don’t fall off and down while I’m working. The nice knobs that came with the dust shoe were too short for this application so I just stuck in longer m5 bolts. I could have put something inside the tube to use the knobs, but that may come later. I guess I could make new knobs for the longer bolts too.
