Mechanical Tools

Lathe and drill press

Grinders, Drills, Lathes, Milling Machines, Welders and any other tools used to modify hardware. If you used it while reverse engineering, list it here!

Essential tools and consumables for manipulating PCBAs (Printed Circuit Board Assemblies)

Soldering Irons

Knockoff JBC station with original JBC soldering tips

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Weller Station

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Tweezers

Manipulating PCBAs often involves handling small and/or hot components while soldering. Most types of tweezers are made of some kind of steel, which can make them susceptible to get magnetized, which is not ideal if that is not done intentionally by using a magnetize tool. This accidental magnetization can be avoided by using tweezers made of titanium. The minimal set of tweezers should consist of following types:

Straight, coarse tweezers with riffles

Knipex tweezer of the type 92 78 77 ESD

This type of tweezers come in handy when something has to be gripped securely in order to be able to bend / shape them in a controlled manner. These tweezers have a thick metal parts that are not easily bend out of shape like the fine tweezers.

Scalpels

There are many types of straight edged and round edged scalpels beside the ones listed below. The one mentioned here are the essential types needed to attach botch wires and sniffing wires to signal tracks covered by solder mask. The fixed connection between the handle and the blade of the disposable version makes this type of scalpel a little bit more precise than the scalpel handle with exchangeable blades. Naughty people even cut through pins of ICs with scalpels to remove ICs without the use of a heat-gun, but you didn't read that here, as that dulls a blade pretty quickly and should only be used in a pinch.

Straight edged scalpels

Disposable scalpel with blade #11

The sharp tip of this type of scalpel makes it ideal to cut the conductor track without nicking nearby tracks. The blade #11 has a short, straight edge that gives good control over the cut.

Round edged scalpels

Disposable scalpel with blade #23

The copper tracks on the top layer of a PCB are usually covered with a layer of (green) solder mask, which can be carefully scraped away from the portions of the track that are about to be soldered to say attach a wire. The round shape of the blade #23 (there are other blades with a rounded edge) allows the user to only remove the solder mask from the track of interest, which will make the soldering process later on very easy, since the remaining solder mask will prevent the solder to stick to the covered tracks. Exposing the other tracks by scraping too much solder mask away may result in a much more difficult soldering job.

Steel Probes

Steel probes are handy to check soldered IC pins for bad solder joints or mixing / applying small quantities of liquid material (adhesives, uncured solder mask, etc.) in a controlled manner.

Straight Probe

Menda 35122

Straight Steel Probe made by Menda of type 35122

Angled / curved Probes

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Solder

Products without Pb

KEK Solder Paste 4258-138

This exotic type of solder is for applications where the upside of its low melting point is worth its downsides in form of more brittle solder joints and potential self-desoldering of components, which make this type of solder a bad fit to use on connectors and other components that are exposed to mechanical stress in the operation. The use in power applications, where the package of components can reach the melting point of this solder, is another application where this kind of solder should not be used.

KEK Solder Paste 4258-138
Melting point: 138°C
Alloy: Sn42Bi58
Microns: 20-38um

Products containing Pb

Mechanic TY-V866, d=0.2mm, 1%..3% flux

Mechanic 0.2mm, 1%..3% flux, Rosin core
Melting point: 183°C

Soldering Flux

Soldering flux is the magic ingredient for a soldering job with many functions that makes it a breeze. It cleans and de-greases the components, promotes wetting (makes solder stick to the components instead of balling up) and reduces oxidation. The "tacky" variety also helps to keep the component in place so the usual step of "tacking down" a component can be skipped with enough soldering skill.

CHIPQUIK SMD29130CC

CHIPQUIK No-Clean Tack Flux SMD29130CC

Solder Mask Products

UV curing solder mask ink

Mechanic UVH900-LY

Mechanic UVH900-LY
UV curing solder mask ink

Soldering Fixtures / work piece holders

Soldering Fixtures for flat, smartphone sized PCBAs

Stickvise

Stickvise

The Stickvise is a low profile vise for PCB holding and soldering. The vise can be customized with parametric jaw plates. The maximal distance between the jaws is about 155.9mm and the jaws are about 76mm wide.

MiJing T26

PCBA fixture made by MiJing of the Type T26

This fixture is a reliable tool to keep PCBAs in place that have a low profile like the PCBAs of smartphones. It has a solid build quality and can be adapted to PCBAs with a higher profile by replacing the blue contact points with 3d-printed ones. The metal base plate is heavy with screwed in rubber feet to keep the fixed PCBA planted on the workbench. All parts are connected with screws, so maintenance or adaption to another application should be pretty easy.

Work piece holders for PCBAs with large TH (through hole) components

Panavise 333

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Magnification devices

Eye Loupe

A simple 7x eye loupe is a small, useful tool for examining small parts. There are single monocular loupes, or for a bit higher cost, head-mounted eyeglass style stereoscopic loupes which may or may not feature replaceable optics.

Headband magnifier

There are many kinds of head-mounted stereoscopic or single-element magnifying devices available. Some are equipped with LED lights, which is handy but not strictly necessary. The picture below shows one that was purchased from a discount tool store for less than US$10.

headband magnifier

USB microscopes

A microscope is handy for examining small parts or PCB traces. There are many inexpensive ones available. A stand is very useful as well for both precise positioning and to keep the camera steady.

USB microscope with stand

Wire Strippers

Knipex 12 40 200

Probably the last general purpose wire stripper you'll buy for about 50 bucks.

Knipex 12 40 200
self-adjusting wire stripper
7-32 AWG, 0.03mm2..10mm2

WSU-30M

Wire wrapping tool made by Jonard

This manual wire wrap tool has a wire stripper for AWG 10 wires integrated in its handle.

Miscellaneous Items

Edding 8400

Edding 8400, black, fine tip (0.5mm), permanent marker

Scotch Vinyl Electrical Tape Super 88

This tape is the recommended tape to use together with thermal cameras to get more accurate temperature readings, especially on reflective (for IR) surfaces.

Advanced tools for manipulating PCBAs

Magnification devices

Stereoscopic microscope (analog)

AmScope SM-4NTP

This stereo microscope has a lockable double arm boom stand and a magnification range of 7X to 45X (zoom) and is great for component level repairs / modifications. The boom stand allows to quickly change between the normal view onto the work piece in the soldering fixture and a side-view while holding the work piece in the hand without the need to touch the focus and magnifications settings. You just pull out the head over the edge of the table to have room to turn the work piece in the hand to be able to get a side-view of pin-less IC-packages or other things that are difficult to see in the normal view.

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Stereoscopic microscope (digital)

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The Stereo Ninja Project

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