I’m having charging issues with my Framework and finally had a replacement mainboard sent out. But when I went to swap out my old mainboard and replace it with the new one, I discovered some of the screws no longer fit.
I’ve included a picture of two of the holes, as well as all the screws. You can see the differences. What happened here? Framework is saying I have to replace the back of the case, which is no longer under warranty.
For the right screw hole, it appears you’ve removed the metal ring that forms the threads for the screw hole. This is why it doesn’t screw in.
looks like the screws were torqued down a bit to much previously, and when you removed them this time they pulled the metal threads out of the plastic standoffs on the bottom case. I had this happen on one of my standoffs on my case bought with an early batch 11th gen. If you have enough screws holding the mainboard in it should still be fine without a few, but unless you want to try removing the broken threads from the screws and try to glue them back into the standoffs they came out of, you’ll need a new bottom case to fix the issue.
There are threaded inserts in the screw holes and it looks like you used (way) too much force and got the inserts stuck to the screws. In your second picture you can clearly see the threaded inserts stuck to screws 1,3 and 4 and on the first picture you can see the threaded insert missing from the screw hole.
Maybe you can remove the inserts from the screws and glue them back in the holes, but you’ll probably need very good glue.
Guess that is one downside to using torx screws, if you hulk it too hard you can break even more than with a philips one XD
With a philips one you’d probably strip the screw head, which would cause other problems, like having to drill out the screw. I much prefer torx, but you have to treat it like a delicate piece of electronics.
That is a different problem though.
All the way with you there, philips is the devil.
You do actually have to do that though otherwise you get this XD.
Okay, but I didn’t use much force. I was specifically paying attention to it, per the instructions. I screwed them in until there was a bit of resistance and no further.
This is a very early batch 11th gen as well. I wonder if there was an issue with them.
It’s not impossible that the factory workers used to much force here when building the laptop in the first place. I wouldn’t expect it, but it wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened.
Or the glue has already degraded due to the age of the Laptop. Shouldn’t happen of course.
FWIW I was a batch 5 11th gen board and I had the same problem with 1 of my motherboard threaded inserts. Also I’ve seen many reports from other users on this forum with the same problem, so you’re not alone. It certainly does not require “hulking” it like others have suggested, those things break with barely any force. Frankly I’m bothered that a “repairable” laptop is using threaded inserts at all.
I really doubt that, since it happened in three separate places. I’d blame myself if it had happened to one of them. But happening to three separate screws really makes me think there was a issue with how they were manufactured.
I was batch 3.
Yeah, especially since tech support is telling me it’s not repairable and requires replacing the entire part.
I’ve already had to rent a computer for a month while I was dealing with the electrical issue with my mainboard, and the fact that this happened the week before Thanksgiving means I’m going to have to rent another one while I wait for them to ship me the back of the case. Add the fact that I can’t be sure this will even fix the electrical issue and I’m wondering if I’m not going to be better off just ordering a Black Friday deal on a Dell and being sure I’ll have a working computer on Monday.
The factory probably uses air powered screwdrivers, which should have a clutch on them to set the maximum torque. sounds like the clutch wasn’t adjusted properly.
What is it supposed to use instead?
Metal. Threaded inserts exist because they are using plastic, but naturally you don’t want to screw directly into plastic so they glue threaded inserts into the plastic instead of using metal like they should have.
Depending on the metal used they would probably still use inserts, especially if the metal was aluminium, which is quite soft, and has problems with screw threads - it is far too easy to jam a screw in the thread if suitable lubricant isn’t used. The same may well be applicable for other light weight metals for the same reason.
Even with metal laptop cases screws usually go into metal inserts in plastic glued to the metal. If the case were machined with the metal of the case threaded, the case would be the most expensive part of the laptop and make the notebook cost many times more. One solution would be to use sheet metal the same material as the plastic inserts, thread it and glue it to the case. From what I’ve seen in notebook repair, even the most expensive notebooks still have plastic glued to the metal cases.
By the way, stressing the case can pull the metal inserts out of the plastic. Usually, the plastic is the first thing to break with stressing a metal case.
