Craft

Adjustable Circuit Board Holder

Secures circuit board for soldering

It’s time for another Cool Tools review. We’re going to take a look at this circuit board holder from Aven. I got this for just $12 on Amazon, and you can get this exact same one using the link in the description, which helps support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

Helping hands tools are really a matter of personal taste. None of them are perfect, and this one’s no different, but for the price it really nails a couple cool tricks.

The first is that once you secure an unpopulated circuit board in here, wedging it in the grooved, spring loaded grippers, you can quickly flip in back and forth.

This is great when you need to drop in a component from the front, bend the leads, flip it over to solder it up, and flip it back for the next component. With this, it’s easy.

There are thumb screws to tension everything up the way you want. It sure beats working off a table, and it’s more rigid than a flexible arm clip.

The second thing this is great for is de-soldering components. If you screwed up and need to take something out, you can heat on one side and pull or pry from the other.

Or if you’re using a solder sucker, you can really rest your hand on this thing and get right up to the spot without having to chase it.

That’s all there is to it. It’s a simple and inexpensive tool, but relatively well built and I’m surprised I don’t see them more often.

-- Donald Bell 05/12/18

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