Ten Useful Things

Hmm, the Stickvise thing seems to be only half way there. You need to be able to turn the board over and also secure it with large parts sticking out underneath. Which is why most PCB holders hold the PCB up in the air and allow rotation too. There are loads out there such as this if you are counting pennies or one of these which I have at home. Alternatively, you could make an add-on for the stick-vise to do the same thing.

At least the guy knows how to spell "vise" properly!

Murray

Edited By Muzzer on 16/01/2018 11:04:23

"Proper" thermostatically controlled irons by Pace, Weller etc (as used in industry) cost an arm and ten legs but there are some decent alternatives without having to go completely Wild East eg the Japanese Hakko which you can get from Maplin. You could probably get it cheaper through alternative channels although you may then be risking cloned fakes.

The whole point of the thermostatically controlled irons is to be able to get up to a precise temperature quickly and stay there, regardless of whether the iron is doing a lot of work or just sitting there. Nowadays most of them will turn off if they realise they are not being used. If you just have a dimmer or a fixed, low wattage iron, you are missing the trick.

The tips are iron coated to stop them dissolving in the solder. Eventually they wear through but that's not really the fault of the iron. They are consumables.

Murray

Murray, yes they are expensive. One thing though, if a modern iron cuts off when quiescent, there may be a saving of electricity.

The Multicore rep told me that Savbit solder was responsible for dissolving iron-coated bits, and not to mix the two. I now turn my own bits from copper rod at 1/4 the price of Antex bits.

Geoff

I'm using a Weller WX2 2 Iron soldering station (at work) and it's brilliant. 12 sec heat time for the 120W iron and a tad faster for the 65W. Auto shut down to adjustable standby temp and auto heat when you pick up the iron. Digital setting on the temperature. With the auto shut down the tips dont wear out. Admittedly we still use full fat solder as none of our stuff is ever sold commercially so the flux is a little less agressive. I really like it.

We also bought a LKPF CAD circuit board miller last year and thats a real joy to use after wet etch for all those years. The nice thing is you can do odd shaped circuit boards.

OK not the sort of thing you are going to find at home, the soldering station alone was around £800 and the mill somewhere north of 20K but you may be interested to hear what prototyping electronics workshops are up to.

regards Martin

RE Stickvice ... I got one of these:

I find them much better than the old type with alligator clips !

Another couple of things :

One of those little plastic gauges for bending resistors or diode leads over so they fit through the holes in the circuit board .

A little cutting tool for cutting out the copper tracks on vero board .

A breadboard / power supply unit - basically just a plastic case with a decent sized breadboard mounted on top and an adjustable power supply inside . Mine has a small amp and speaker combo , mounting posts for a arduino uno , relays and leds with screw terminals so i can wire up a project and test it . I have found it very useful over the years.

Ian .

Edited By XD 351 on 16/01/2018 12:51:37

Mine is built into the case for a BBC Micro modem :-0

Neil, the Duratool device is fine, but what all these jigs are lacking is a heatproof foam to be clipped to them just before you turn them over for soldering, then all the bits don't fall out!

Geoff

If you buy from CPC you can get them at one price branded Duratool or nearly twice as much branded Velleman...

I ordered mine out of a CPC special and got it for about £4 including vat!

Neil

Natural rubber bench mat. Grooved side down for circuit board work. Grooved side up for working on equipment. Board holders encourage the bad habit of bending leads to retain the component whilst it is soldered. If the flat side of a mat is used in combination with a matchbox sized block (of wood or similar) leads can stay straight and the component is easily removed if required.

Edited By P Saunders on 16/01/2018 17:38:33

The only Weller irons I'm aware of with with just a transformer in the base are the magnastat ones using the curie point to operate a contact in the body of the handset.

I've never seen a tip burnt through, loss of plating after many months and thousands of joints but never burnt through. Never seen the transformers nor anything fail on them but the swich in the handset. (we didn't have a production line but our 'office' had about 50 in use for field work) I think I might have one kicking about in the shed. It's not been used for 25+ years. A 50W Weller with digital temperature control (7 segment display) gets used now and again on kit dating up the mid / late 80's, anything newer and I use a Metcal MX500, 13.56MHz RF tips, spot on temperature control and near instant heating from cold.

I'd drop the PCB holder and add a headset magnifier with really good lighting as essential for any surface mount work. Even better would be eyes with half a century less use.

Edited By Martin 100 on 16/01/2018 19:13:07

I can only come up with a few useful things:

1. Hammer
2. Crow bar
3. Pallets for timber/fuel
4. Saw
5. Electric screwdriver
6. Screws
7. Duct tape for when it moves and shouldn't.
8. WD40 for when it doesn't move and should
9. Sand (moulding)
10. Scrap aluminium for pallet fired furnace melting into said sand.

Anything else can be built up to from there with time, persistence and severe shortage of cash.

Regards

Richard.

1. Ice cold workshop full of rejects
2. Armchair
3. Nothing on telly
4. Router and paid up Internet connection
5. Laptop
6. Browser
7. Forum Account
8. Bottle of Beer
9. Bottle opener
10. At least one keyboard trained finger

Dave

Interesting - I've been dealing with LPKF for laser welding production equipment (for plastic assemblies). Those are certainly well north of the 20k mark....

Is the LPKF PCB machine actually a milling machine or a laser driller / cutter like this? I ask because they are a laser company. Looks pretty tasty either way.

Murray

I think I've just answered my own question - they do one machine (the Protomat D104, phoooaaarr) with a milling spindle (100krpm) and a laser.

Edited By Muzzer on 16/01/2018 20:40:46

Re the old style Weller irons with curie point temperature control. The originals used screw terminals on the side of the base to connect the iron to the low voltage side of the transformer. Then they "improved" the design and fitted a plug and socket using the miniature Bulgin 3-pin type. Turned out these were designed originally for mains, and some mains leads were around our lab at the PO Research Lab with 3-pin plug on one end and miniature Bulgin on the end. Someone just has to see what would happen, the results were (briefly) spectacular as the transformer primary generated 2.4 kV for a short time, followed by what I understand was called in the BBC a "loud brown smell"...

H&S had a fit.

A (huhmm) tip for those that make tips from copper for soldering irons. I learned this for the old copper bits heated in a furnace but have applied it to any copper: When shaping the tip is finished, coat the tip with silver brazing alloy. The tip will last a loooonnngggg time.

Pete

Here's my rework station, it includes a vacuum pump and was locally made here in Vic, Australia.

I have another one coming along with a microscope and specialised tools for smd work.

Here is my favourite wire stripper, the cam precisely adjusts the jaw gap (so that no conductors are damaged), set the end stop (length of insulation to be stripped) and squeeze the handles. It is a real joy to use such tools.

* Danny M *

Edited By Danny M2Z on 17/01/2018 08:11:05

A waking thought re: inverting pcb holders and keeping the parts 'in'.

Top quality (thick) carpet underlay for resilience and rockwool model boiler insulation as a heatproof layer?

Geoff

It's just the plain old milling version rather than laser. Protomat S63 actually. Seeing as we had been using etch tanks for the last 30 years and sending boards out it's a real step up. Certainly beats manuall drilling.

With regard to the Wellers the system used direct tip temp measurement not the old style curie point system (which was allways good at generating EM glitches as it clicked away at the back of the bench). As I say with the auto standby the tips just last and last.

regards Martin

regards Martin