Better Than (Un)Helpful Hands

[nanofrog]

Nanofrog, unless I am missing something, aren't hemostats just a little to harsh to hold wire for tinning?  I use hemostats but locking them down on wire would put a pretty good crimp on the wire.  I've adopted the filed teeth and heat shrink tubing on my helping hands and I think that it works just fine.

I mean to use one of the modification ideas robrentz created and shared with all of us.   

[timb]

By the way, here's my helping hands after the mod mentioned above:



I really need to replace the heat shrink with silicon tubing, as I've already melted the new heat shrink.


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[timb]

Uhhh that's not the right picture at all...and I can't edit the post! Brilliant new update Tapatalk! *Sighs*




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[timb]

Ffffffff... Okay, I'll fix the post when I get home...


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[MacAttak]

LOL you have no idea how many times I scanned the first post from today and then read back up through the rest of the thread trying to figure out how that photo had *anything* to do with the prior conversation 

[nanofrog]

Uhhh that's not the right picture at all...

Personally, I like the photo of your lab assistant. 

Photo of leads on holder...    Brain meltdown maybe?  If so, don't feel bad as you're not alone. I pretty much get those on a daily basis.   

[VK5RC]

"In dog we trust"  HiHi. ?

[nanofrog]

"In dog we trust"  HiHi. ?

How about just a spare woofer lying around?

[LukeW]

Those alligator clip things are so crap. They're horrible. Don't waste your money. Just get a couple of toggle clamps instead, or a small vise.

[VK5RC]

I must be the weird one here but I have found my el-cheapo helping hands really good for doing Anderson connectors and the centre pins of coax connectors. Stuff where you need to hold something light and solder it, without draining too much heat away nor melting the plastic of the vise/clamp. I have filled the alligator clips with solder where it is clamped onto the frame to make it more rigid and smoothed the bearing surfaces (round ball and dimpled plate) where it rotates.
It has a quite heavy base and holds stuff nice and close to the desk, much closer than my panavise.
PS great dog by the way.

[nanofrog]

I must be the weird one here but I have found my el-cheapo helping hands really good for doing Anderson connectors and the centre pins of coax connectors. Stuff where you need to hold something light and solder it, without draining too much heat away nor melting the plastic of the vise/clamp. I have filled the alligator clips with solder where it is clamped onto the frame to make it more rigid and smoothed the bearing surfaces (round ball and dimpled plate) where it rotates.
It has a quite heavy base and holds stuff nice and close to the desk, much closer than my panavise.
PS great dog by the way.

Easier to customize the Loc-line solutions though, including keeping them from toppling over IMHO. Cost effective as well. 

FWIW Panavise makes solutions that will get the vise at or near the edge of the table, such as the 311 clamp base, 380 vacuum base, 335 magnetic base, and the 308 weighted base. Not cheap though, particularly outside of the US from what I've seen (worse than just swapping currency symbols in some places, such as Amazon's price on the 301 in the UK vs. the US; ~2.5x more expensive in the UK <not sure if VAT is applied or not>). It's worth 30USD, but 75USD is ludicrous IMHO.

As per drawing too much heat, that's relatively easy to deal with (wood, leather, rubber, heat resistant plastics between the object and any metal <i.e. use as jaw faces>, and stainless steel if it must be metal to metal contact for example).

[GreyWoolfe]

"In dog we trust"  HiHi. ?

How about just a spare woofer lying around?

I have 2 because you should have stereo

[nanofrog]

"In dog we trust"  HiHi. ?

How about just a spare woofer lying around?

I have 2 because you should have stereo

Then you've actually a quadrophonic system, as you can get stereo output from a single source.  And don't forget about the added olfactory dimension from the rear output of each source (even when sound = rest).      

[GreyWoolfe]

"In dog we trust"  HiHi. ?

How about just a spare woofer lying around?

I have 2 because you should have stereo

Then you've actually a quadrophonic system, as you can get stereo output from a single source.  And don't forget about the added olfactory dimension from the rear output of each source (even when sound = rest).      

Oh yes, I do deal with source venting everyday, mostly only from 1 rear channel-the male.   He can knock a buzzard off of a corpse wagon at 30 paces.  The female channel is a bit of a princess and more discrete.    On the plus side, the volume from the front channels is very impressive, easily exceeding 30 over S9 as we say on the ham bands.

[nanofrog]

Oh yes, I do deal with source venting everyday, mostly only from 1 rear channel-the male.   He can knock a buzzard off of a corpse wagon at 30 paces.

Tychem® garments (bunny suits) might be worth a look, unless you can convince your dog to pull a small wagon behind him containing a fume extraction system w/ a gas filter.   

[SeanB]

Charcoal tablets can knock it down a little. Wrap them in bacon...........

[tggzzz]

They are £50 in the UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bessey-BVVB-Vacuum-Base-Vise/dp/B00PUU8MQE/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1420131505&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=bessey+bvvb

As pointed out in https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/%28uk%29-mini-vice-at-aldi-from-5th-feb/msg600805/
tomorrow (Thursday) there are £7 mini-vices at Aldi https://www.aldi.co.uk/en/specialbuys/thur-5-feb/product-detail/ps/p/suction-vicetable-vice/

[GreyWoolfe]

Charcoal tablets can knock it down a little. Wrap them in bacon...........

Because everything is better with bacon

[nanofrog]

Charcoal tablets can knock it down a little. Wrap them in bacon...........

Because everything is better with bacon

[SeanB]

You do not need bacon with the 2 little hoovers, they catch in mid drop. They both are addicted to cheese, and love it, you cannot have cheese with them around without being gently reminded ( by a dog trying to climb your leg) to share.

[GreyWoolfe]

We don't feed our 2 human food, unless it falls on the floor-they are fast.  We do have plenty of Milk-Bones and Beggin' Strips for them.  SWMBO used to also buy the Snausages until she found out that I like them too.

[SeanB]

Had to look up Snausage on Google, and I see...... As my vet says, diabetes in a bag. Ingredients similar to paint, banned dye and who knows what else as well.

[Boondock Journeyman]

Robrenz,

As a real life machinist I can see where you are going and I love it.  I will be making some prototypes late today.

The point of the following is a detailed description of using machinist stuff to position for precision soldering.  Skip it if that sounds dumb to you.

What I have been using as positioning parts for detailed solder work either under a cheapo magnifying glass on a flex arm or medium power stereo-microscope is my dial indicator stuff. I started with the obligatory Last Word 711 line of widgets and added the Universal Snugs #57S and 58S on just about any combination of rod stands. I have some 50 year old #657A's (or whatever the number was back then), and two #3657U clones that work great.

The Sleeves #657R and 665L together with the combo rod thing #PT27171 are fantastic for support at a critical point that must be very small.

Using a 24" x 36" x 1/4" thick steel base and about 12" x 18" of ESD mat cut from BER1-23BKT, I can position all the supports around the outside and work on the mat.  Non-magnetic bases are available everywhere so if you don't want magnets in your ESD environment, you can easily get rid of them.  I only use the steel and magnets because I need them for my machine setup and layout station.  If I where starting form zero, I would never use the mag bases.

To start looking at this stuff get Starrett's "Precision Tools" catalog # 33 at: http://content.yudu.com/A290vg/StarrettCatalog32B/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http://www.starrett.com/catalogs. Under options (far left top of page) the drop down window allows you to save for offline work.

Look at pages 133-143 and 177-182 to learn the product vocabularies. Then go to EBay and try the vocabulary.  Try not to buy Starrett. The clone parts are all there for 1/10th the cost.  I have had great luck with the Chinese vendors and terrible luck with the Hong Kong vendors (long delivery).

Nice work,

Boondock

[timb]

Uhhh that's not the right picture at all...

Personally, I like the photo of your lab assistant. 

Photo of leads on holder...    Brain meltdown maybe?  If so, don't feel bad as you're not alone. I pretty much get those on a daily basis.   

No, for some reason the forum app isn't attaching the correct pictures to the posts. Or letting me edit. I filed a bug report hopefully it gets fixed soon.

I completely forgot to go back and edit the post. I'll add it to my list for the morning!


Sent from my Tablet

[timb]

"In dog we trust"  HiHi. ?

Dog with an EEVBlog!


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