Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Portable Soldering Station!

Adam Savage from Testim here in my cave with a new one day build and today's one day build is devoted to shop infrastructure now these are some of my favorite builds because I end up living with these builds on a daily basis sometimes for years and when you design something right that works for you like that it becomes a pleasure every single time you break it out and that's what I'm hoping to end up with today there's also several different kinds of shop infrastructure builds there's like I've never taken care of that shelf over there which is true I've never taken care of that shelf over there yeah it's got to happen someday then there's I just got a new piece of equipment shop infrastructure that is also something that I've done in the past but today's is a tool that I've been using regularly almost on a daily basis for decades and I have been watching myself use this tool here in the shop enough to conclude that I think I need a mobile station for stay for my soldering iron yes soldering it is a key part of any makers Arsenal and there are many different options for soldering irons and I've used them all over the last 30 or 40 years I've used plugins I've used propane I've used Weller and Dremel and they've all been fine fine I mean particularly I like the the butane soldering pens because they they tend to get hotter they heat up quickly and they're quite reliable for me in my experience but I've recently come across the soldering iron of my dreams and it is this little puppy my friend Zac ratting used this on when he worked with me attaching laser tag to Peter Jackson's World War One airplanes for savage builds and I was like dude what is that and he's like it's this new thing these soldering irons are fantastic first of all they plug into a standard 12 volt plug here you can run them on a lithium ion battery that has this plug outlet but I have a preference over that and it involves about how shops use batteries right like you can buy lots of different types of lathy my own batteries of different form factors and use them to power things and that's fine I have a whole bunch of these the going to find the charger and plugging it in and going to find the charger and plugging it in it becomes this whole extra bit of infrastructure that I find a bit tiresome so whenever I can I prefer to use the batteries I already have in the shop the batteries for my cordless tools like most shops I have chosen a specific brand for most of my cordless tools that brand is to Walt and so I have tons of Dewalt batteries like this big fat flexible 60 volt mofo and do Walt makes an aftermarket clip on these they make an aftermarket clip that allows you to charge your phone through two USB ports that's pretty freakin cool but there's an aftermarket Dewalt clip that you can also buy that in addition to the two USB ports has a 12 volt port so pop this into your battery pop your soldering iron into their turn on the soldering iron it starts to heat up immediately the top temperature that you have it to is adjustable it heats up quite quickly and I find to be honest this is my favorite sensitivity form-factor everything for a soldering iron that I've ever experienced I'm ecstatic about this thing and I've been using it so much recently and monitoring like I said monitoring my usage patterns I guess I don't need this to heat up for this but I've been monitoring my usage patterns and I think I now have in my head the right design for a portable soldering station that allows me fast access to a soldering iron and all the things I might need with that soldering iron that's today's one-day build first things first with a design like this I'm gonna gather all the things I plan to have on my portable stuttering station and then I'm gonna figure out how to fit it in my portable soldering station here is what I have learned about my proclivities using the soldering iron 1 I need helping hands that is those 2 alligator clips on mobile arms to hold your pieces in orientation with each other years ago we covered this on tested when I showed off my electronics cart I found these great helping hands from China I'm going to repurpose those here I had built those helping hands onto my electronics cart with the thought that I'd wheel my like trying to start wherever I need to solder I have found that I am NOT interested in doing that I've tried to do that I just find it gets in my way that what I really need is a portable soldering station that I can literally pick up and plop on my workbench so it will have helping hands two of them made of those two of them made with alligator clips this is very funny I know this looks the same as this but this is the official lock line the company that invented this beautiful rigid ball-and-socket technology this is some bee brand off-brand not nearly as good version of the same so I'm gonna swap this out for this I'll have wire strippers like these I will have a torch which is for tightening heat shrink tubing solder of course electrical tape the soldering iron a soldering iron station which is the the thing that holds the pen and the steel wool for cleaning the tip the battery connector a battery again these batteries are just going to come off my battery line when they're charged and popped in as I need them and some heat shrink tubing I have found most of the wiring I do is narrow gauge wire so I'm just gonna have a small complement of this size of heat shrink tubing in my kit I just don't need a whole versatility if I need other stuff it's right there and wire nuts wire nuts are basically small mechanical connector for a wire that you can do a solderless connection this is just my preference I love these little guys I use them all the time I go through probably about 50 a month honestly I can never keep them in stock so I'll have a little drawer in here of probably a hundred of these in any given point those are all the things that I've got to fit into a small form-factor that doesn't have to be small but one of my other requirements is I don't want it to take up this much room on my table every time I get around to an electronics project my table becomes covered with all this crap so I want a small footprint which I think means a tall device I'm thinking this device will probably have like a five inch square footprint but it'll be tall and the idea is that it'll have a low center of gravity so it's stable but a narrow footprint so it doesn't take up too much workbench space and all of this stuff fits in it vertically and now it's time for me to figure out exactly how all of this fits into a five inch by five inch vertical package I'd love just this like a chunk of steel at the base of this but I don't think I have such a thing to be honest I no I don't think I've got one oh well I mean as long as I used the big battery it provides its own significant amount of weight I have a couple of these flexible and I used them for different things yeah okay I'm gonna operate on the assumption that the battery is the lowest thing on this right okay so I'm kind of I can see that this is a complex problem to solve like there's a lot of moving parts to it so I'm gonna start with the base and the battery connector I'm gonna go from there so I'm gonna be splitting my yeah yeah all right once we get that settled then we'll start to grow up from there to make sure we can hold everything my goal is maybe not more than 18 inches tall to hold all the things in orientation yeah let's get started okay that's the good stuff Oh more good stuff good stuff good stuff bad stuff good stuff good stuff okay let's take a moment here to talk about plywood it's a particular issue of mine I love plywood plywood amazing but not all plywood is made equally so if you went to a random lumberyard and you said give me your give me some excellent finished ply they might hand you a piece like this which has to a surfaces really gorgeous finish surfaces this is a lovely piece of plywood from both sides from the end it leaves a little something to me too you can see it's uh it's it's I know this looks like a lot of layers one two three four five six seven layers in my experience this plywood which is often sold as like high-end finished ply has very little cohesive strength in its in its gluing infrastructure and there's lots of voids for instance like there that's just an entire void that showed up while I was cutting it a note to the cautious if you put a piece of plywood like this into your laser cutter those voids can get filled with hot gases and set your laser cutter on fire I've seen it happen if you want void las' high-end plywood go with something like this arctic birch ply many more layers and actually I'll show you a close-up and if you want to see some truly egregious stuff as a another example that's crap times five that's semi disguised crap this is the good stuff that's the excellent sandwich filling and this is glued that there are no voids so there's no places where those hot gases can collect during a laser cut I'm not laser cutting any part of this so it's not gonna come up but in general because I love plywood I tend to like the good stuff this right here this is a luan this is a single center layer sheaves in two nice layers and again this 8 inch luan looks great on either side and it can be fine for finishing certain things you never have to put any mechanical pressure on it or anything but from the end you can see that it's got this big fat soft middle layer and two thin veneers on either side of it and this stuff I'm trying to break it there we go it just doesn't have the same tensile strength as some other aircraft ply that I've collected even this five ply that's a quarter-inch thick is way way way better what was that like if short two minute rant about my feelings about plywood you're welcome start with the base so gonna have that it's gonna have I think I'm gonna try and mount this oh that's what I do I put it in like this cuz I always yeah I'll mount this on the ground so I put this in like this then a soldering iron can plug in the side here just fine okay so what is that form factor that is yeah five inches all right I'm just gonna start cutting some pieces to size here and start rough assembling I'm gonna break out the glue and my nail gun I like that there then this would be that was the diameter of that right yeah that'll do it okay happy with that happy with that you have certain amount to get out of the way okay so these guys lived there okay these guys come here so they don't have to it should be oneechan they're gonna be able so if those live like that here and I have a second one that is here now I'm getting somewhere slowly keep on drilling holes until I get what I need they're wrong about this maybe I want them over here because if they're here and I'm pulling this out yeah I kind of I think I want them here okay great that's going to be a separate thing and that's gonna be its own sink great okay so I can undo that whoops and I can now I'm aware I'm using a lot of crazy glue on this thing I'm using a lot of cyanoacrylate glue but that's not to hold it - that's not the final it's to hold everything in orientation until I can use wood screws and actually make it all go together correctly just FYI alright it's time to do some assembly some assembly is required here comes I'm going to do some glue and yeah okay so that's pretty good we're doing pretty good there that goes there this guy blink great my handles in the way of methane well hells bells margaret we got a form factor that works we're just not high enough I mean handles nut I know fluff that ground all right let's see here yeah I kind of have to recut that okay I'm getting happier by the second this is great a puffs like that so okay now we're we're on the homestretch I'm gonna put my little doodads there rubber feet you brought her shall we take it for a test run while the soldering iron is heating up I'll grab a piece of wire we have two pieces of wire and we want to join them so we twist the ends we bring them in proximity to each other using the helping hands that's nice it holds its own weight oh these are good bring them together like that it's not a pretty joint I know it's not a pretty joint this is just a proven concept that's not about my soldering skills stop yelling at the screen that I'm terrible at soldering I know already however I am very pleased with my skill at building my portable soldering iron machine of those I am so impatient that I gotta - I have one more thing which I don't know where it goes which is the heat shrink but that is as reasonable place to spawn ow as any Oh a really important note about these aftermarket Dewalt 12 volt adapters if you leave the battery in it for like three days it will drain the battery to such an extreme degree it won't be chargeable so do not leave the battery in the battery holder do not taunt happy fun ball this has been a one-day build and I'm really pleased see you guys next time you

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,496,999

Rating: 4.8897119 out of 5

Keywords: adam savage, one day builds, adam savage's one day builds, tested, testedcom, soldering iron, soldering station, cave, workshop, how to, build, model kit, shop organization project, workshop ideas, build series, workshop organization, workshop tour, adam savage one day build, one day build, tested adam savage one day build, one day builds adam savage, one day builds tested, tool organization ideas, workshop organization tips, tool organization

Id: 8uGS11yuVyo

Length: 34min 37sec (2077 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 15 2020