Third hand for soldering

Make your own!

On a sunny day (Mon, 06 Oct 2014 18:58:23 -0500) it happened ChesterW wrote in :

I have used it, things fall of the wall after a while. I still use it to glue felt pads on the table (for under coffee cups), so the pad sticks to the table, not the cup.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have one of those alligator-clips-on-a-rod gadgets, but it's a lot trickier to use than one might think on first look. I really like the pictures of this one:

SparkFun Third Hand Kit

but the $35 price tag feels a bit steep.

Frank McKenney

On a sunny day (Tue, 07 Oct 2014 08:31:43 -0500) it happened Frnak McKenney wrote in :

I have one of these:

That is about 15 USD.

Quite useful. Maybe ebay has cheaper ones?

I expect one could duplicate that using bits of bare copper wire soldered i nto a piece of pcb - put the wire through the hole, loop it underneath and back up through another hole, soldering all, else the solder would give way . Weight the pcb, or maybe better to just screw the wires to a lump of meta l. Haven't tried it though, apply 400v at your own risk.

NT

I sometimes use bus wire to hold a scope probe in position on a board. I run it up over the board with the ends twisted around the board support screws (legs) and it has a loop in the middle. I slip the probe through the loop and position the tip on the point to be probed. Gravity does the rest.

Indeed. I use one of these

Not as flexible, and the base is too light,

I have a couple of those. My major use for it is to hold oscilloscope probes.I put a small binder clip on the probe and clip the alligator clips to that.

Yes. They are/were available here (USA) for much less from Harbor Freight.

The very best thing about them is the glass magnifier. Mine does not have distortion near the edges. I love that part of it at least.

I found several at Harbor Freight. But I can't tell which have decent magnifiers and which don't.

In the UK its generically called the trade-name Blu-Tac. Is it any good for , non-production, ie one-off SMD repair, component placement before hand soldering? I'll give it a go next time , I usually use a dot of hotmelt glue, but sometimes I'm too tardy in the soldering and it remelts before I'd like it to

Yes, I've used it for that. I take a couple of pea-sized lumps and stick down the part from two sides, and then nudge the part until the pads line up. The original tac is picked up by pressing down a larger piece. It sticks to itself better than it sticks to the board.

ChesterW