Best Tweezers etc

[amspire]

I recommend: try to get your hands on medical equipment tweezers. ( for stainless steel) The quality is awsome. The sometimes come up second hands on ebay and co - often never used stock from the military etc.

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk

The steel used in medical tweezers can be very good and it is a very corrosion-resistant steel. They will look great for decades. Non-medical tweezers however have the freedom to use steel that can be superior in some ways to the medical steels. There are many excellent steels that are no good for sterilising. For example, type 302 stainless is a medical grade steel used in some tweezers. Type 304 has very similar properties of strength and hardness, except it is more heat resistant then type 302- so it is probably a better choice to use under a hot air gun.

[eliocor]

@rob77: thanks!!!

[amspire]

I have been scratching my head over your photo:


It looks like the genuine Vetus tweezers are made by Peakwin in China and they have been making them since 1996. They make about 3.5 million a year.

The only one in your photo that has the right looking font is the first, except I cannot find any mention of an ESD version of the TS-15 tweezers on the Peakwin sites, and the "15-ESD" characters are not in their usual font.

If it is genuine, the TS-15 tweezers are made using a steel that has about 75% of the hardness of the Vetus ESD-10 to ESD-17 range.

I have added a photo of my $2 Vetus ESD-14 clone tweezer tips - these are the ones I mentioned could take 1.6kG of squeezing without damaging the tips. I am holding a Toshiba HN1B01FU NPN/PNP transistor chip in the air by the lead without a problem. You can see the tip is not perfectly shaped, but it is close enough. Just put a standard 14 pin LM324 chip next to it for a size comparison.

[eliocor]

Fine!
I love those comparison photos!!!

[janoc]

Seriously, these tool threads are pure gold and nerd porn!

Thanks guys, this is very useful stuff. I would even suggest the admins to create a special section for such information, because this gets asked over and over.
 

[Harb]

Yes a "Tools of the Trade"section would be good........

It saves buying and learning the hard way.........the members here are a wealthy source of info on whats good and whats not from practical experience thats really priceless in my opion.

[KL27x]

You can see the tip is not perfectly shaped, but it is close enough.

If you have a microscope to see what you don't like, you can fix it. A fine stone (Arkansas stone or sintered ceramic) or 1000+ grit sandpaper stuck to a piece of FR-4 is about right. Getting the ones with the right tip, spread, size, force, erogs, etc is more important to me than how many layers of Kevlar I can pierce with them.

[nukie]

I really like my Lindstrom Ti tweezers. It's super lightweight and it has very light spring compression so there is great amount of feedback when it is gripping on very tiny 0402.

Some tweezers have very heavy spring which provide very little 'feel' so you will use too much or too little force.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

[benadamson]

Sorry for the necro, thought it would be better than starting a whole new thread for the same topic.

I'm considering a few options for tweezer sets for work, with the expectation that they will get moderate use for SMD rework by a few people.

• Option 1, £70: Lindstrom 9855 - TL SS-SA, TL AA-SA, TL 2A-SA, TL 4A-SA, TL 7A-SA
• Option 2, £95: Ideal-Tek K5SMDF.IT - SM103, SM107, SM108, SM111, SM115
• Option 3, £200: Lindstrom 9854 - TL 5C-SA, TL 5-SA, TL SM 101-SA, TL SM 102-SA, TL SM 107-SA, TL SM 108-SA, TL SM 115-SA

I won't go for the £200 set as there's a chance they will be abused so spending huge amounts is unwise. But how do the other two options stack up?

[eliocor]

Every person must have its OWN set of tweezers and MUST be responsible for its care!
There is no space for "a chance they will be abused"!
BTW, I think I can't help you in choosing between the sets: you say nothing about your requirements:
- minimum component size
- what kind of reworking
- other requirement
- ....

[MarkMLl]

Incidentally, I meant to mention this before. I got a pair of ceramic "tweezers" from BangGood on a whim, they cost about £2.50 and while I'm not entirely sure what they're made of (carbon steel leaves a streak on them) they're surprisingly useful for holding stuff right next to a soldering iron.

https://www.banggood.com/Heat-Resistant-Anti-static-Multifunctional-Ceramic-Tweezer-for-RDA-RBA-DIY-Vape-p-1545873.html

MarkMLl

[janoc]

Incidentally, I meant to mention this before. I got a pair of ceramic "tweezers" from BangGood on a whim, they cost about £2.50 and while I'm not entirely sure what they're made of (carbon steel leaves a streak on them) they're surprisingly useful for holding stuff right next to a soldering iron.

https://www.banggood.com/Heat-Resistant-Anti-static-Multifunctional-Ceramic-Tweezer-for-RDA-RBA-DIY-Vape-p-1545873.html

MarkMLl

That looks very much like teflon tips.

But guys, you do realize that this is a thread from 2017, right?

[Mr. Scram]

That looks very much like teflon tips.

But guys, you do realize that this is a thread from 2017, right?

Did the tweezer market change unrecognisably in the mean time? Did Big Tweeze sink its claws in us?

[MarkMLl]

That looks very much like teflon tips.

I know. But they're sufficiently hard that I can't scratch them (even where there's a surface imperfection) with a kiridashi blade which instead just about leaves a streak (i.e. around 6 on the Mohs scale), and the tips are noticeably cooler in free air than the loop. Also note the brass inserts for the screws.

Bottom line: I don't much care what they are, they're useful at the price.

MarkMLl

[dzseki]

My favourite tweezer is a vintage Swiss "Dumont style 4" it is a dream actually to work with...

[tooki]

Tweezers?  Aren't those the things that women use to pluck their eyebrows?  

If you want to find high quality fine Forceps I would look at Dumont (Swiss), Miltex (German), Tiemann and Aesculap (both American made I think).

Forceps and tweezers are different things, dude. Forceps are like scissors, but with grippy tips instead of blades. Tweezers are leaf spring based grippers. Some are made for beauty, many (most?) are made for technical and laboratory use.


I have some Vitus tweezers and IMHO they suck. Don’t even begin to compare with the Wiha I own at home or the Erem and Ideal-Tek I use at work.

[MarkMLl]

Forceps and tweezers are different things, dude. Forceps are like scissors, but with grippy tips instead of blades. Tweezers are leaf spring based grippers.

Disagree. You can have tweezers and forceps which are indistinguishable, the name is determined entirely by the profession/trade in which they're used... although the distinction is blurred in e.g. first aid and emergency surgery.

Slightly later: curiously, looking round for reputable sources to confirm (or refute) that, I came across https://www.fishersci.co.uk/gb/en/products/I9C8L3UU/spatulas-forceps-utensils.html where they've got forceps of all shapes and sizes- of which very few are "scissors" type. However they do have what they call "watchmaker's forceps"... my father and de-facto grandfather were watchmakers and I certainly *never* heard them refer to anything other than tweezers.

Which I suppose confirms my argument: the name is determined by the user, not by the pattern or manufacturer.

MarkMLl

[helius]

Forceps are like scissors, but with grippy tips instead of blades.

I have heard those referred to more often as "hemostats/haemostats", at least the variant that locks closed. Although they aren't commonly offered by electronics suppliers, they are very useful for manipulating small objects, cleaning debris from narrow passages, etc.

[tooki]

Hemostats are a specific type of forceps. (As you said, the kind with locking teeth, since a hemostat is designed for closing off blood vessels in surgery, as the name implies.)

But tweezers are very distinctly NOT forceps.

[tooki]

Forceps and tweezers are different things, dude. Forceps are like scissors, but with grippy tips instead of blades. Tweezers are leaf spring based grippers.

Disagree. You can have tweezers and forceps which are indistinguishable, the name is determined entirely by the profession/trade in which they're used... although the distinction is blurred in e.g. first aid and emergency surgery.

Slightly later: curiously, looking round for reputable sources to confirm (or refute) that, I came across https://www.fishersci.co.uk/gb/en/products/I9C8L3UU/spatulas-forceps-utensils.html where they've got forceps of all shapes and sizes- of which very few are "scissors" type. However they do have what they call "watchmaker's forceps"... my father and de-facto grandfather were watchmakers and I certainly *never* heard them refer to anything other than tweezers.

Which I suppose confirms my argument: the name is determined by the user, not by the pattern or manufacturer.

MarkMLl

I suppose so. I’ve always seen the basic distinction I originally explained. Certainly, I’ve never seen the word “tweezers” reserved for the cosmetic device.

[MarkMLl]

I suppose so. I’ve always seen the basic distinction I originally explained. Certainly, I’ve never seen the word “tweezers” reserved for the cosmetic device.

I've used forceps during dissections, and almost simultaneously tweezers to manipulate the weights on a precision balance in the same environment. They were indistinguishable, at least in geometry, and it has long struck me as odd.

I don't think you can distinguish by tip shape, i.e. pointed or spatulate. It might, however, be possible to say that tweezers usually have flat contact faces while forceps are serrated, and that would be consistent with artery clamps (haemostats etc.) sometimes being called forceps... anything more than that is due to habitual usage by a profession or trade.

MarkMLl

[2N3055]

I suppose so. I’ve always seen the basic distinction I originally explained. Certainly, I’ve never seen the word “tweezers” reserved for the cosmetic device.

I've used forceps during dissections, and almost simultaneously tweezers to manipulate the weights on a precision balance in the same environment. They were indistinguishable, at least in geometry, and it has long struck me as odd.

I don't think you can distinguish by tip shape, i.e. pointed or spatulate. It might, however, be possible to say that tweezers usually have flat contact faces while forceps are serrated, and that would be consistent with artery clamps (haemostats etc.) sometimes being called forceps... anything more than that is due to habitual usage by a profession or trade.

MarkMLl

Forceps is a medical profession term for tools for holding.. It includes all kinds of tools that other professions call tweezers, and all kinds of scissors looking devices with (for arterial clamping, and those just designed to hold something ) or non clamping devices...

In electronics, in addition to tweezers, medical forceps of locking types are very useful..

[tooki]

FWIW, the wiki article “forceps” says that term is pretty much exclusively used in the medical field, while everywhere else, they’re called tweezers.

For sure, if you google “ESD forceps”, practically all hits are for “ESD tweezers”.

[MarkMLl]

FWIW, the wiki article “forceps” says that term is pretty much exclusively used in the medical field, while everywhere else, they’re called tweezers.

Which is much what I said: it appears to be application-defined.

For sure, if you google “ESD forceps”, practically all hits are for “ESD tweezers”.

I'd hardly say that Google's idea of what's synonymous is a reliable source of information :-)

MarkMLl

[tooki]

No, but if google can’t even find many examples of “ESD forceps”, that does say a lot.