9 Useful Electronics Tools Under $13

I'm Tom Bell four cool tools and as some of you know I love working on electronics projects so in this video I've rounded up some of my favorite inexpensive tools for working with electronics first up the Aven adjustable circuit board holder 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 of cool tricks the first one is that once you secure an unpopulated circuit board in here wedging it in the grooved spring-loaded grippers you can quickly flip it 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 then flip it back for the next component with this it's easy there are thumb screws to tension everything up just the way you want and 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 desoldering components if you screw it up and you 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 just rest your hand on this thing and get right it to the spot without having to chase it that's all there is to it is a simple and inexpensive tool but relatively well-built and I'm surprised I don't see them more often next up my favorite flush cutters from hako for more years than I care to admit I would cut in trim wires and circuit leads using these generic wire cutters they'd get the job done but because the blades are somewhat recessed you could never trim things completely flat for that you need flush cutters and it's a subtle distinction but these are so much more satisfying when you're cleaning up the bits of wire on a project because the cutting edge is move all the way out front you can take that cut right down to the board if you want and here's a quick tip I learned this from watching Star drummer from bold port solder up his beautiful projects typically when you solder a connection together on a through-hole circuit board like this you get what looks like a little mountain of solder then you can come back through and trim it down and maybe you get something like this and it's tidy and it gets the job done but these days with project boards that are almost works of art in themselves here's a technique for making solder joints that are prettier and smoother to touch take that same joint you just made and use flush cutters like these five dollar tacos to trim the joint right down to the board then come back around with your soldering iron reheat the connection very quickly and hit it with just a touch of solder it takes some practice but if you get it right you get a perfect little dome something about the surface tension of the new solder and the lack of any central element poking through makes this happen and when you apply this technique over an entire board it almost looks like it's been put together with little rivets it's a nice look and smooth to touch you can clean up the extra flex with a swab of isopropyl alcohol and you've got a board worth showing off you don't need any special soldering iron or solder to make this technique work but you really do need the flush cutters to get up right against the board I've got a link to these exact ones in the description speaking of soldering irons here's one that runs off USB let me say up front that I am a big fan of portable soldering irons when they're done right I've used the $35 hack oh I've used the $40 dremel versa tip and I even have a separate video directly comparing all three of these but for this video let's just focus on this USB soldering iron here's what I like about it number one it's skinny it's the skinniest iron I've ever used which makes it really nice to hold all together with the cord it's just super compact too it's cheap even if it's not your favorite soldering iron at nine dollars you can put one in every kit you have and not be Precious about mistreating it number three USB is everywhere you can plug it into your computer or a portable charger or a wall adapter there's nothing to recharge and for there's built-in safety touching this little button turns it on and if you let it go for more than 15 seconds it turns off automatically now it's definitely not perfect it only really gets hot enough for general electronic work and the skinny tip loses heat quickly also while it's portable it's not exactly cordless you still have to plug it into something even if that thing is a portable battery which also means that if you lose this a after cable your host still I'm glad to have it around and at nine dollars I think it's a great value just to have as part of your tool bag next up wearable magnifying glasses I bought these a year ago looking for a way to get a better look at soldering up small stuff they really are perfect for those times when you're wiring up or painting or gluing up something tiny and delicate plus there's a little LED on the front that helps put a little extra light on things these come with an interchangeable set of lenses the most powerful one gives you 3.5 times magnification and this is really the one I leave on most of the time I honestly wish that went up a little higher as those lower lenses really don't do much for me the lenses are plastic so they can get scratched if you're not careful which I'm a little guilty of on the upside compared to glass these are lightweight and can be worn for long periods without hurting your face the lenses also flip up and down so that you can kick in the magnification just when you need it but by far my favorite use for these is to put them on and surprise people they make you look so super nerdy these should actually be filed under birth control because they are quite possibly the unsexiest pair of glasses ever made next a $10 servo testing board servos are one of the coolest weapons in the maker arsenal unlike a simple motor which spins either forward or backwards a servo provides gradual precise movement left or right there the steering mechanism in any remote-control car you've ever played with but to make a servo work you have to send it more than just power you have to send it a control signal to otherwise it won't work at all now there are relatively easy ways to control servos with an Arduino board or a Raspberry Pi but you'll have to do some programming it's not cheap and you'll need to breadboard some components it's kind of a hassle as an alternative you can get a small cheap servo tester like this you can get them smaller and cheaper but this $10 one from low on soul has some nice extras on the left side you plug in power anything between four to eight volts the voltage gets displayed here on the little readout the terminal block takes any kind of bare wire from a power supply the other socket here can connect the three prong balance cable of common 7.4 volt RC lipo batteries next to the terminal block you have these two sets of servo connections with V's you can hook up either one or two servos and control them simultaneously on the right side of that you have this nice knob that gives you a full range of control on the servos and below that is a toggle button that returns the servo to its center position I learned about servo control boards from Jonathan Odom's project on making this animatronics 3d printed robot puppet he use five of them to manually animate his puppet and for what it's worth luan Sol has another board that lets you connect and control up to six servos but I haven't tried it yet more than anything I just love how this cheap board gives you a quick way to play around with servos last weekend I used cardboard and some magazine cutouts to quickly mock up a silly design after dinner that probably would have taken me an hour to put together with an Arduino next up a swivel head deburring tool there are a few different types of deburring tools this one is a swivel head model made by general tools it's essentially a plastic handle that holds a curved metal blade perfect for smoothing out any sharp edges left behind from cutting metal or plastic it's a quick tool to use it's sharp and doesn't take a lot of force it's commonly used by plumbers to smooth off the rough edges of freshly cut pipe for me though I mostly use this for cleaning up holes drilled into metal or plastic project enclosures drilling almost always kicks up some rough bits that prevent switches or buttons from sitting flush a quick pass with the deburring tool cleans it right up it's also great for smoothing out rough lines from longer cuts in plastic or sheet metal for example on my Hello Kitty go-kart for Maker Faire I had to carve away a lot of pink plastic with hack saws and rotary tools to make everything look a little bit more deliberate I ran the deburring tool over a lot of it to remove the shredded and melted bits next up a cheap way to hold things down on your workbench if you do any soldering you probably have a of helping hands or some bulky heavy thing like this that can hold your project or component steady while you wire them they're useful but a little clunky to travel with and they're often overkill if you're just splicing a wire - in terms of price and portability poster tack is a great alternative the first problem it solves is what I call the wandering board problem where you're pushing your project around the table as you're trying to solder it up using a glob of tack the temporary fix your board in place makes the job a lot easier the second problem salt by tack is component to component soldering maybe you need to put a resistor on the leg of an LED or splice two wires together everyone has their way of doing things but for me in terms of convenience few ways are faster than just sticking the pieces down with tack and hitting it with some solder next a powerful pocket microscope I have bought this thing just to see what a tiny six dollar microscope even looks like it comes in this flimsy box and understandably is mostly plastic but what you get is fairly impressive the microscope itself is just this passive lens system that you can focus with your hand but you also get this series of LEDs that you can switch on to add extra light switch one way you can look at things under a UV light which is apparently handy for seeing anti-counterfeit marks on money I had microscopes as a kid but they were always this classic style where he had to put samples on a slide and they were more or less fixed things what surprised me about this cheap tiny microscope is how much fun it can be just to take it to anything out in the world the wood grain on a table the tread of a bike tire the print in a comic book all of these hidden worlds open up and you can just instantly peek at them if you have kids it's a slam-dunk even if they already have a standard microscope like my kid the reaction to this was totally different beyond the novelty I found to be useful a few times for inspecting electronics projects and troubleshooting connections or reading little component values or serial numbers and I should also mention that I was able to use this with my smartphone camera to take close-up photos or videos that's actually how I shot a lot of this video here so you can somewhat think of this as a super macro lens adapter for your phone finally an assortment of heat shrink tubing of all the things I have in my electronics toolbox nothing gets my kid more excited than seeing me use heat shrink this stuff is honestly magic plus there's usually fire involved so bonus if you're unfamiliar these are plastic tubes that you slip over connections that shrink tight when heat is applied it's a pro way to keep wires and components from shorting into each other it's a real lifesaver when you're splicing two wires together and you want that splice to be sealed up like the rest of the wire you just cut the length you need slip it on before you solder and then heat it in place when you're done either with a heat gun a mini butane torch or even a lighter or soldering iron if you're in a pinch heat shrink is one of those tools I totally take for granted until I show it to someone who's never seen it before and it blows their mind this 200 piece multi pack is a great introduction though it doesn't include the really fat one-and-a-half inch tubes needed for that pie enclosure it works on an Adafruit trinket though and for basic wiring you really can't beat the price so those are some of my favorite inexpensive tools for working with electronics none of them are essential but all of them have come in handy for me and you can find Amazon links to each and every one of them in the video description down here and you can find thousands of reader recommended tools at cool - tools org

Channel: Cool Tools

Views: 22,322

Keywords: DIY, Maker Update, Cool Tools, Kevin Kelly, How To

Id: jUX9mriybNM

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 01 2018