Tweeze Your Way To Soldering Success!

Soldering, for those of us who spend a lot of time at an electronics bench, is just one of those skills we have, in the way that a blacksmith can weld or a tailor can cut clothing. We have an uncommon skill with hot metal and can manipulate the tiniest of parts, and incidentally our chopstick skills aren’t that bad as a consequence, either.

But even the best with a soldering iron can find useful tips from an expert, and that’s where [Mr SolderFix] comes in. His channel is chock-full of soldering advice, and in his latest video he takes a look at tweezers. They’re a part of the solderer’s standard kit and we all have several pairs, but it’s fair to say that we don’t always have the right pair to hand.

It was refreshing to hear him confirm that a good pair of tweezers, once a certain quality threshold has been met, need not necessarily be the most expensive set. We’ve certainly seen expensive tweezers with suspiciously bendy ends, and have found random AliExpress purchases which have stood the test of time. He also makes the point about which situations a set of tweezers with serrated heads might be more useful, and he demonstrates with a crystal oscillator.

As with photography though, we’d observe that sometimes the best set of tweezers to rectify a mishap are the ones in your hand. If you’re interested in more from [Mr SolderFix], we’ve featured his work more than once in the past. When he showed us how to lift SMD pins, for example.

Soldering Holder From Old Lamps

One of the neat things about 3D printing is that you can create custom parts to fit salvage to use in projects. For example, [Willyrags05] took a lamp — looks like something you might find at a resale shop — harvested the gooseneck tubes from it.

Before 3D printing, it would have required ingenuity to cobble together some way to secure base and add a clamp to the other end. A blob of epoxy wouldn’t look as nice and not everyone can machine nice round adapters. Don’t have the same lamp? No problem. You can easily modify the adapters or create new ones to print for yourself.

Outside of the 3D printer, the project required a way to cut the ends off the tubes. [Willy] used a chop saw, but it seems like a hacksaw or bolt cutters might work. Neatness doesn’t count since the printed adapter will cover all sins.

Once the tubes are ready, some glue, magnets, and alligator clips (why aren’t these crocodile clips?) complete the assembly. [Willy] mentions he needs stronger magnets, but we might have been tempted to make the bases wider with depressions for multiple magnets. This is probably a project you won’t duplicate exactly, but it may well inspire you to upcycle that old lamp in the attic.

Maybe you prefer a vise-like holder. There are plenty of other choices.