Our favorite tools have a new home on the wiki. Each week we’ll muse about one of them. Have your own tool review? We’ll post that too!
Magnification makes soldering faster, easier, and more comfortable. The classic helping hands have a detective-type magnifying glass. Pros often use a stereo microscope. We discussed some DIY USB options in the forum this week too.
Last year Adafruit started carrying the OptiVisor magnifier for around $25, so we tried it.
Though things are only 2.5x times larger than normal, the magnification immediately improved our soldering. 0.5mm pitch TQFP pins are clearly visible and we can solder them individually.
The head gear is light weight and easy to wear during hours of soldering. We occasionally use it while wearing glasses without issue.
Soldering is more comfortable because you don’t need to be so close to the work. Focus is best at about 10″ from the PCB, but we think one or two more would be even better.
We picked up a couple habits with the visor. One thing we do is keep parts closer to the PCB. Shifting focus from the visor to look for a part gets annoying.
This tool is highly recommended, we use it daily.
There’s a lot of options out there, what do you use?
There’s more tools too.