Hackaday Prize 2022: Glue-Hindered Smart Tweezer Repair Involves a Rebuild

Resulting tweezer assembly, with a 3D printed replacement case for both of the probes

[Dan Julio] owns a pair of Miniware multimeter tweezers, a nifty helper tool for all things SMD exploration. One day, he found them broken – unable to recognize any component …read more Continue reading Hackaday Prize 2022: Glue-Hindered Smart Tweezer Repair Involves a Rebuild

Control The Suck With This Manual Vacuum Pick-And-Place Tool

The tapes that surface-mount devices come in may be optimized for automated pick and place, but woe betide those who try to dig components out manually. No matter what size package, the well on the tape seems to be just a wee bit too small to allow tweezers to grip …read more

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Printed It: Toolbag Essentials

While complex devices assembled from 3D printed components are certainly impressive, it’s the simple prints that have always held the most appeal to me personally. Being able to pick an object up off the bed of your printer and immediately put it to use with little to no additional work is about as close as we can get to Star Trek style replicators. It’s a great demonstration to show off the utility of your 3D printer, but more importantly, having immediate access to some of these tools and gadgets might get you out of a jam one day.

With that …read more

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Simple Mechanism Gives Support for SMT Assembly

With the fine work needed for surface-mount technology, most of the job entails overcoming the limits of the human body. Eyes more than a couple of decades old need help to see what’s going on, and fingers that are fine for manipulating relatively large objects need mechanical assistance to grasp tiny SMT components. But where it can really fall apart is when you get the shakes, those involuntary tiny muscle movements that we rarely notice in the real world, but wreak havoc as we try to place components on a PCB.

To fight the shakes, you can do one of …read more

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Tweezing Diodes

Surface mount diodes are simple enough — all you need to do is make sure you have the anode and cathode in the right order when you place them on the pad when you solder them. These SMD diodes come in industry-standard packages, but do you think there’s an industry-standard way of marking the cathode? Nope, not by a long shot. To solve the problem of figuring out which way the electrons go through his LEDs, [Jesus] built a simple pair of LED tweezers.

The purpose of these tweezers is to figure out which way is up on a LED.  …read more

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Ask Hackaday: Helping Hands

[ProtoG] sent us in this video (also below) where he demonstrates the use of machinist’s dial-gauge indicator arms as helping hands. I’ll admit that I got so jealous that I ordered a pair. I wouldn’t say that I need more tools to hold things in place, but I certainly want them. The rapid coarse placement combined with fine adjustment looks so sweet. Using them as scope-probe holders is brilliant.

Our own helping hands, purchased for $5 from a surplus shop, have seen nearly twenty years of use now. About ten years ago, I heat-shrinked and plasti-dipped the jaws, and since …read more

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[Dave’s] Not Just a Member of the Air Club for Tweezers

We are always surprised how much useful hacking gear is in the typical craft store. You just have to think outside the box. Need a hot air gun? Think embossing tool. A soldering iron? Check the stained glass section. Magnification gear? Sewing department.

We’ve figured out that people who deal with beads use lots of fine tools and have great storage boxes. But [Dave] found out they also use vacuum pickup tweezers. He had been shopping for a set and found that one with all the features he wanted (foot pedal, adjustable air flow, and standard tips) would run about …read more

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