Reddit reviews Neiko 01902 Adjustable Helping Hand With Magnifying Glass | Dual Alligator Clips

It's a helping hands. For soldering typically but for any time you need a device to hold something in place to free your hands to work on it somehow.

https://www.amazon.com/Neiko-01902-Adjustable-Magnifying-Alligator/dp/B000P42O3C

Helping hands
https://www.amazon.com/Neiko-01902-Adjustable-Magnifying-Alligator/dp/B000P42O3C/

Can use for fly tying or holding circuit boards while soldering, etc.

A set of helping hands with alligator clips can hold the pieces still, so you only have to use one hand to paint.

+1 for the Hakko FX888D-23BY

Some solder wick and a desolder pump is something else I would add. Also a cheap tip thinner for a noob (like me). Helping hands are cheap and can be useful. Also a cheap variety pack of tips. Nothing expensive till you are comfortable with keeping them clean and tinned.

These are all things I bought when I purchased my Hakko FX888. All have been useful.

Desolder Pumps and Wick

[Tip tinner] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NS4J6BY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_k1kZDbJ5TS5Q6)

Helping hands w/magnifying glass

Various Tips

Hakko FX888D-23BY


All of this cost me $146 shipped. Right now, it'll all total to $139.83 shipped if in the US

I'm using Amazon links as requested, but if you have a local big box tool stop you can get the store brand of most all these items for the same price or less. I know from personal experience, that from the tools I've listed all but two of the items are cheaper in store than on Amazon.


Everyone needs a knife! (~$7 home depot)
Razor blade


Where are you going to keep everything? (~$10 home depot)
Utility Sack


You'll need a good all around screw driver. (~$8 home depot)
6-in-1 Reversible Screwdriver


Need some basic general maintenance pliers? (~$20 home depot)
Pliers Set


Ratcheting screwdriver for those repetitive screw jobs. (~$20 sears)
Ratcheting Screwdriver


Where the hell did I put that T6?
Magnetic Precision Screwdriver Set


Where did that damn screw go?
Flashlight


Extra stuff!


I recommend the ball end ones specifically if you don't have a good angle on what your trying to get at (cough towel bar cough cough).
Long Arm Ball End Hex Key Wrench Set


For those damn pesky wires and that damn lack of a third hand.
Helping hands


When duck tape and gum wont cut it.
Beginners soldering iron kit




I have used all of these specific items extensively besides the ball end hex keys, and that specific helping hands.

I bought the surgical tubing to pull in the pots. I have not soldered in years but I researched before I started and based on good tips I bought a hotter soldering iron (40 watts +) and 'helping hands'. Both were huge and I could not have done it without the helping hands. The magnifying glass was just in the way. The alligator clips were strong so to keep them from cutting through the wires when holding them I put rubber tubing over the clips.

The soldering went so much better than I expected.

A small vise or helping hand can be invaluable, if using a helping hand I recommend wrapping the alligator clip hands in a couple layers of electrical tape as they can be quite sharp and scratch up connectors and such. Since there's virtually no risk in damaging components, most soldering irons between 60-120W should work well. Any 60/40 rosin core solder will work, if you're unable to get leaded solder due to local regulations, I've heard the 99% tin stuff is decent, again just make sure it has rosin core. A smaller tip might be beneficial if using smaller connectors such as 2.5mm. A solder sucker and wick is useful if any mistakes are made. Lastly, a DMM is helpful to make sure there are no shorts and that all connections have continuity and low resistance.

Amazon.

I have:

Generic Hobby Knife - Generic hobby knife kit. Blades were shit so I buy Xacto brand but the knives and case are good.

Needle Files - Extremely useful for polishing off mold lines or smoothing cuts.

Adjustable Jeweler's Saw - Handles a ton of different size blades for cutting metal, plastic, or wood.

Swivel Handle Pin Vice - Probably the best tool you can buy. Great for customizing what your troops are carrying.

Third Hand - Stupidly useful. Mostly for gluing.

Jeweler's Saw Blades - Bought these for my saw. Useful. Others might be better.

Micro Drill Bits - Bought for my pin vice. Useful. Others might be better.

Mini Drill Bits - Bought for my pin vice. Useful. Others might be better.

A good magnifying glass is just as important as a good iron, especially once you realize you're not 25 anymore.

Any chance it's still salvageable or did you burn a hole through one of the chip? ;)

If you need to solder on a pcb you'll want a temperature controlled soldering station, other essentials are rosin core solder, some flux to apply before soldering, and a helping hand to hold the pcb/component and wire in place when soldering. I leave my soldering station at a little less than 350 when I'm tinning wires and soldering on a pcb. Wipe excess solder off the iron, heat up the spot you want to solder to with the wire in place, then apply solder to the wire when the flux has smoked off, it should flow into the joint. You don't want to keep heat on a pcb for too long as it can damage components on the board. Make sure you tin the tip/s of the soldering iron with solder before and often during use, or the tips will oxidize and refuse to tin until you scrape the oxides off with a razor knife. Typically a problem at high temps, around 300C solder will melt and oxides form very slowly and the tip will stay hot without needing a retin for a 5-10 minutes. I usually set my temp on max when I first turn it on and hold a bit of solder to the tip and then turn it down when the solder melts. Saves a few minutes of warm up between use.

If you need to heat up a larger surface area (like a battery terminal) for tinning or soldering it helps to bump up the heat - sanding a large surface also will help. Steel and other metals may require use of a corrosive flux made specially for that.

That's about all I know XD

Buy a set of Helping Hands. Yes, you can solder without one, but it makes it so much easier that for a couple bucks it's absolutely worth it.

Glad to hear it!

For soldering, I'd recommend doing what I did and just go to Home Depot or Lowes or a hardware store and get a few feet of wire, maybe a few different gauges of it, take it home and practice. Cut it, strip it, solder it together, and use electrical tape or heat-shrink wrap to cover all exposed metal. Rinse wash repeat. Did that 3 or 4 times and got more comfortable with it.

Grab one of these helping hands along with a basic soldering kit off amazon and you're good to go.

https://www.amazon.com/Neiko-01902-Adjustable-Magnifying-Alligator/dp/B000P42O3C/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=helping+hands&qid=1569619359&sr=8-4

Have fun!

Those eyes are really cool. I've got a bunch of mini's showing up soon from the Bones 3 kickstarter and will have to try that out on some of the bigger pieces before working it down to the smaller ones. Unfortunately most of the large models I have now are Big stompy robots (privateer press Cryx) and they don't really have eyes on them.

I have not tried a magnifier head set. I tried using the magnifier on a pair of helping hands but I had no sense depth perception so it didn't really work out for me. I've heard that the headsets work fairly well and you can maintain your sense of depth. Let's just say they're on the old wishlist so I can try them out.

Apologies, just realized I did not reply to your RCA cable comment.

When I did the tonearm rewire, I also swapped out the RCA cables which were connected to the board. I did both at once so I can't tell how much of this was the cable replacement vs the tonearm rewire - but I noticed a good drop in the overall noise floor and better clarity. In my head, I credit the noise floor drop to the RCA replacement and the clarity to the tonearm review - but again, don't take my assumptions as gospel. It did seem like a worthwhile change.

Take a look at KAB, that's where I picked up the tonearm rewire stuff and it was cheap and defiantly worth the effort. I have very limited soldering experience and it still only took me about 1.5 hours to get everything pulled apart and reassembled with the RCA cable soldering and tonearm rewire soldering. Just need to be delicate. If I were to do it again, I'd def pickup an inexpensive set of helping hands, something like this to make the job easier as it is delicate work.

Currently with the SME 309, I'm using the Sumiko Premier PIB-1 Interface Box so I get to pick the cables running out from there to my phono stage. Currently using bluejeans RCA interconnects and have no complaints. Super 'high-end' cables an area I haven't been convinced enough that it makes that huge of a difference, so I'm going to stick with what I have as I have no issues.

The run in a little longer than I like and it crosses paths with some of the power cables behind my components - so a good cleanup and cable management project is needed. I picked up the supplies a few weeks back to take care of cable management but don't want to commit to it until after the external power supply change as I know that'll need to be considered when I end up taking care of all the wire management work.

All the best brother (or sister)!

This helps me so much when soldering. I'm not sure how much it would help your specific weld you have to do but it will help in the future


http://www.amazon.com/TEKTON-Helping-Hand-with-Magnifier/dp/B000P42O3C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421774456&sr=8-1&keywords=helping+hand+soldering