Whats your favorite type of tweezers you use the most?

[artvandalai]

What are your favorite tweezers brands, model, and tweezer material you find using the most in your projects?

[loki42]

Erem are my favourite by far.  I like the flat stubby tips for most stuff and the curved pointy fangs pair for small stuff around other stuff. 

[Kean]

For small SMD parts: Ideal-Tek 5A.SA and 7A.TA

[artvandalai]

Stainless or Titanium tweezers?

[Kean]

Stainless for day-to-day (gets some abuse), Titanium for higher precision (0402 and 0201).

[TimFox]

For applications where you don't want to leave metal traces behind, especially on ceramic parts, there are tweezers available with ceramic ends.

[David Hess]

They are not inexpensive, but Lindstrom stainless steel.  I have some which come to a needle point (1), and some which are about right for 0603 surface mount (00).

[artag]

Venus/Regine 7A antimagnetic
I haven't compared them with the best above, though, but I think they're in the same bracket of both price and quality.

I only use them for smd parts, I prefer Lindstrom pointy pliers for larger objects and to preserve the points of the Venus tweezers. They still meet perfectly despite being bought 30 years ago and used by me for 20.

[T3sl4co1l]

Just a generic Aven 18490.  A few others get regular use, but these the most.

Primarily for SMT soldering.  Occasionally, as weak pliers for anything from placing THTs on board or solderless, to forming component leads.

Downsides: tips kind of wide/thick, not the most symmetrical grind, stainless is still a bit magnetizable (have to hit them with a degauss every some months or so).  Starts to get problematic for very dense say 0603 chips and below, but most everything I do is lower density / larger parts than that, quite serviceable with them.  Despite occasional (arguable?) abuse [light pliers-ing], they're only very slightly bent (<0.05mm?); or maybe were off by that much from the factory, I don't recall.

Overall, a very cromulent tool: it does what it does, it's usable, it ain't remarkable, it has its blemishes.

Tim

[tooki]

Erem are my favourite by far.  I like the flat stubby tips for most stuff and the curved pointy fangs pair for small stuff around other stuff.

A year or two back, I ordered another pair of Erem tweezers, and was sorely disappointed by the quality. The precision in the tips just wasn’t there. Dramatically worse than old ones.

[loki42]

Did you get Swiss ones?  They are now owned by Bain capital so I'm sure they are busy making everything more terrible to save a few cents. 

[Psi]

Digikey Ideal-Tek brand,  normally one that has a bend in it. Like 5B.SA.6.ITE

Straight ones always seem to get damaged more often than bent ones, and the bend usually makes it easier to work with given how you hold them.

[djsb]

Can anyone recommend a basic set that are good quality but inexpensive for a beginner? Thanks.

[tooki]

Did you get Swiss ones?  They are now owned by Bain capital so I'm sure they are busy making everything more terrible to save a few cents.

They're still made in Switzerland.

[David Hess]

Can anyone recommend a basic set that are good quality but inexpensive for a beginner? Thanks.

The only reason I have a bunch of Lindstrom tweezers is that work was getting rid of them.  I would never have bought them for myself because of their high cost.

Knipex and Wiha have equivalent tweezers for half the cost and are probably where I would start.

[Bryn]

I have myself the Towot Precision Tweezers from Amazon, but I actually bought these for my mother for her jewellery making...

Even though they have rounded ends as opposed to the usual pointy ones, they still do the job

[Doctorandus_P]

Can anyone recommend a basic set that are good quality but inexpensive for a beginner? Thanks.

The tweezers with ceramic tips from Ali / Ebay are a decent start, but the quality is not consistent and thus it's a bit hit and miss. In about half of them the tips are not well adjusted, but because the ceramic tips are fixed with screws you can align the tips yourself.  With a dremel (clone) and diamond disks you can also grind the tips so they both have the same size.

With one of these I had a tip broken off due to gross overload. I ground the remaining tip into a chisel point (knife angle about 70 degrees) and fixed both legs of the tweezers together.  This turned out to be a surprisingly useful tool. You can use it to scrape PCB's clean in between pads, remove copper from PCB's and even use it as a wire cutter by just pinching a thin wire between the chisel point and the PCB.

======================
For the rest, Most of my other tweezers are Erem I think BB model (quite big) and 4-SA (small) I think the original point of the 4-SA was extremely thin, sharp and fragile and got bent by just looking at it. But I have ground the tip down to a more sturdy point. With stainless tweezers you can do this without them looking ugly such as with plated steel. I do find that all those stainless steel tweezers wear out. The tips get a bit rounded with use and then they do not hold parts as well. Especially when handling a lot of ceramic SMT resistors (sharper edges then SMT capacitors) the wear becomes noticeable after some time, but grinding a bit of off the tips fixes that.

[mtwieg]

Tangential question: what's the preferred method of cleaning tweezers? This is often my primary problem with placing very small components (0402 and smaller. And no, magnetism isn't the issue). A little bit of flux on the tip makes it impossible to let go of components properly. I've found that the MG chemicals flux remover spray actually doesn't word very well for cleaning tweezers. IPA wipes are about the same. Wish there was some way I could clean the tweezers like how a brass sponge cleans a soldering tip.

Are tweezers with ceramic tips less susceptible to this issue?

[David Hess]

For general cleaning I have a dispenser bottle filled with acetone because it is inexpensive and readily available.  A 50/50 mixture of acetone/isopropyl or toluene/isopropyl might be better.

[chrono68]

Tangential question: what's the preferred method of cleaning tweezers? This is often my primary problem with placing very small components (0402 and smaller. And no, magnetism isn't the issue). A little bit of flux on the tip makes it impossible to let go of components properly. I've found that the MG chemicals flux remover spray actually doesn't word very well for cleaning tweezers. IPA wipes are about the same. Wish there was some way I could clean the tweezers like how a brass sponge cleans a soldering tip.

Are tweezers with ceramic tips less susceptible to this issue?

Hit your tweezers with the hot air gun to get the flux liquidous again, then use a Kim wipe soaked with isopropyl to take it off while they're still hot.

[chrono68]

For pad/trace repair I love the generic AliExpress titanium tweezers. They have a little stop on them to prevent you from over bending which is nice.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806707692049.html?

If I am too lazy to change tools and want my tweezer to also scrape material off the board while doing pad repair, these 11PRO "Twerzers"(sic) have been slowly replacing the titanium for me.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802959614037.html
The Mechanic KA-11's are also good but they cost more for some reason.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806101617948.html

For bigger work I just use a pair of Techni-Pro 4-SA which are what my company provides for the SMT operators. They do the job just fine.
https://www.tequipment.net/Techni-Pro/TST-4-SA/Economy-Tweezers/

[bson]

Lindstrom here, but mainly because their grips feel right in my hands.  I do believe they're made by Erem?

I use some of their other hand tools also, for the same reason.

[shabaz]

A couple of photos of various shapes..

The ones I use regularly are the flat-ended Wiha ones labelled PSF SA.
The two in the photo are almost identical, the longer one suits my hand size. I use those with SMDs. They are super-comfortable (only lightly sprung).They are OK even for 0402 size, but once you've gone down that small then there are better options, e.g. 7ABB shape could be an option (not in the photo, but they are curved with a flat foot), or just more pointy tweezers.

They are not expensive, just mid-range price. They should last a lifetime (I think they came from the Vomm factory). But so will other top brands like Erem and Lindstrom, etc. Not possible to go wrong with any of those.

There's a spade-shaped reverse-grip tweezer in the photo. I got that recently for lifting off small boards from the pre-heater. I really like it for that purpose.

The other photo shows a very cost-effective kit of seven Piergiacomi tweezers; works out to just a few $ for each one. It's not a bad kit, especially if you can find it for that low price (it happened to be so close in price to just a couple of the Piergiacomi tweezers separately, so that's the only reason I went for the kit, even though I won't use all of them).

I'm just so used to the flat/squared-off (i.e. PSF) shape, that I ended up using those Wiha ones mostly.

[tooki]

Tangential question: what's the preferred method of cleaning tweezers? This is often my primary problem with placing very small components (0402 and smaller. And no, magnetism isn't the issue). A little bit of flux on the tip makes it impossible to let go of components properly. I've found that the MG chemicals flux remover spray actually doesn't word very well for cleaning tweezers. IPA wipes are about the same. Wish there was some way I could clean the tweezers like how a brass sponge cleans a soldering tip.

Are tweezers with ceramic tips less susceptible to this issue?

I haven’t had any trouble cleaning mine with pretty much any solvent at hand, but I concur that acetone is the quickest.

Of course, the stubbornness of the residues depends on the fluxes you use. Modern no-clean fluxes for lead-free are usually the toughest.

Can you still get acetone nail polish remover where you live? I remember those that came in a jar filled with a totally saturated, very soft sponge that had slits cut in the center (in a + shape) intended to shove one’s finger into. Something like that could work for tweezers.

[mtwieg]

Hit your tweezers with the hot air gun to get the flux liquidous again, then use a Kim wipe soaked with isopropyl to take it off while they're still hot.

Yes, heating it up might help a lot, so long as the acetone still does its job before evaporating. Will give this a try.

Can you still get acetone nail polish remover where you live? I remember those that came in a jar filled with a totally saturated, very soft sponge that had slits cut in the center (in a + shape) intended to shove one’s finger into. Something like that could work for tweezers.

Oh, this sounds nice! You mean something like this? User-posted videos show people sticking their fingers through a sponge.

Even if it doesn't come with acetone, I doubt there's anything stopping me from putting acetone in myself.

That gives me another idea. I wonder if one could fill a flux pen with acetone, and use that as a reusable tweezer cleaner?