Third hand for brazing from a ball joint. Third hand for soldering. You can just buy a soldering tripod

I very often have to solder, and sometimes it is not very convenient to do it. Large parts can be squeezed in a vice, but you can't do that with small ones. For this there is a device third hand, but I did not want to buy such a toy in the store, I decided to make it myself from the garbage at hand.

This creation began with a stand. Cut a rectangle out of centimeter plywood:

And I immediately wondered how to fix the bar on the base and then attach horizontal racks to it. For good reason, it was necessary to cut a thread and secure it with a nut, but the necessary die was not found. I had to get out of the situation ...

To secure the stand at the base, I found a bolt with a longitudinal hole. It was smaller than the diameter of the bar, so we had to turn it a little:

To fasten the horizontal struts, I found a long nut (found in Soviet cassette recorders) and carved a bed for it at the end of the bar:

I wanted to fix the nut with threaded connection, but the drill stubbornly did not want to make a hole in the end face, it had to be done in this way.

The assembly is ready for assembly:

For the strength of the connection, I put a tube on the bar and made a cut in it:

And he began to solder the nut:

Now let's move on to securing the bolt. We grip the part in a vice and start soldering from above:

The part is ready:

Now what do we need to do? That's right, you need to connect upright rack and the base. To do this, I cut out another auxiliary part - a rectangle made of 4mm plywood:

I drilled a hole in the base with a feather drill. I also made holes in the auxiliary plywood backing and found 4 self-tapping screws. Everything is ready for assembly:

The floor is done, the base with the vertical stand is ready. Moving on to the second part - creating horizontal posts, clamps and a magnifying glass.

These metal plates, pins and bolts with washers are the future arms of our device:

To fasten them, I use these bolts with washers soldered to them (for the convenience of unscrewing / twisting):

But I got these details out of hard disk(magnet stands). I cut the thread with a tap and got nuts that are convenient to tighten by hand:

And the most important thing is the clamps. I soldered the bolts to the ends to secure and rotate around the axis:

We begin to collect the nodes of our mechanism.

Holder No. 1

Knot details:

Assembly unit:

Holder No. 2

Knot details:

Assembly unit:

Magnifying glass holder

Knot details:

Greetings, dear friends! You are on my modest blog dedicated to radio amateur creativity and other sacred knowledge. By the way, I forgot to introduce myself, my name is Vladimir Vasiliev and today I have a new entertaining article for you.

As you probably learned from the title, today we will talk about a tripod for mounting printed circuit boards. From the article you will learn what this tripod is remarkable for and how great it makes life easier when mounting. Do not forget to subscribe to blog updates, you just have to leave your email and you will receive articles immediately after they are released. Well, well, they drove.

There is little content here, so we use it for health :-)

It is no secret that every radio amateur and every radio installer is faced with one very common problem. This problem is pervasive and is referred to as a lack of third hand.

Is the lack of a third hand a serious problem?

Indeed, I decided, for example, to solder two wires. Well, what, this is not a cunning occupation, what is there to talk about? Well, all the same, here I took in right hand soldering iron, flavored it with a decent portion of solder, dipped it in rosin. Then I take the wire with my left hand and ... .. and that's all ... the resource in the form of human hands has unexpectedly ended 🙂 Which hand will we take the second piece of wire and then combine them?

It would seem that I am talking about completely obvious things, all these situations are familiar and everyone is used to them. Everyone for himself decides these questions in his own way.

To begin with, before soldering the two wires, it will not be superfluous to first twist them together (before that, you still need to tin it) and then you can start soldering. Still, it will be more convenient to solder the twist than to combine and stabilize the two cores separately.

You can also connect your hands on an external carrier to this action, and the external carrier can be a friend, brother, matchmaker, or just a passer-by :-) Just be sure to observe safety precautions, because your assistant may not be a big fan of therapeutic procedures with a soldering iron.

Homemade third hand - one of the options for solving the problem

By the way, one of my options for solving the problem of lack of third hands is a wooden tripod. Here is a homemade third hand for soldering, I made it with my own hands from a children's cube, two clothespins and two self-tapping screws. It turned out to be budgetary and practical. I spied this simple design of a soldering clamp in one old radio amateur magazine (I don't remember exactly whether the Radio magazine or the Modelist-Constructor).

This clamp is good for everyone, but whatever one may say, the design is still not perfect, the clothespins do not grip the radio component tightly enough, and the cube itself is so light that a decent-sized capacitor lays the entire structure on the blades.

And yet how good it is that we live in the 21st century, in a century when the industry has already prepared for us ready-made solutions and all we have to do is how to take and apply them. So I decided that it was enough to be content with handicraft devices, it was time to apply something more serious.

You can just buy a soldering tripod

Online stores are simply full of various clamps, tripods and other soldering devices. I dug among all the variety and bought myself just such a LODESTAR tripod.

So in the dealextreme store you can buy such a soldering tripod for less than 800 rubles, by the way, there are still some promotions there, so it will probably be even cheaper.

Although this tripod is called in the common people the third hand for soldering, on the website of the dealextreme store it is called "p soldering machine with holder and 2X magnifying glass ”although this does not change the essence.

Lodestar L316218 tripod, pros and cons

Let's see what are the pros and cons of this clever clip for boards and small radio parts.

This tripod has clear advantages over the previously discussed cube.

pros

• The base of this tripod is quite massive so it's not as easy to knock it over as a wooden cube with clothespins.

I even decided to conduct a small experiment, I loaded this tripod a little more than usual. Usually he holds the details for me, and then I loaded him with my debug board, did not even expect, but he held out and did not budge. This is despite the fact that I removed the magnifying glass, thereby further facilitating the design of the tripod.

• Clips-manipulators have many degrees of freedom, in other words, the clamps can be rotated in different directions, as your heart desires.

To be honest, I wanted to stir up some gif-animation, ala a dancing robot, but something didn't work out, so we are content with simple pictures.

• The presence of a magnifier with 2x magnification, this very circumstance is a tangible plus.

Although I myself did not use a magnifying glass on a tripod, I simply could not find a suitable task for it. I do not use SMD accessories, so I don't need it on a tripod. But from time to time I find a use for it, sometimes I look at the small markings or, after etching, inspect the board for the presence of jumpers.

Minuses

As you know, nothing is perfect, so in addition to all the pros and cons of the "third hand" tripod, there are also disadvantages.

• Inadequate clamping.

The clips in this tripod are ordinary crocodile connectors, and as you know, these crocodiles were originally designed to be crimped onto a wire. These crocodiles are fixed in the holes of the holder tubes with special threaded rods. This circumstance slightly spoiled the impression of the whole respectable look of the tripod.

In general, for me, this was the only significant disadvantage in the whole design of the soldering tripod.

In general, I was very pleased with the purchase, as this device makes life much easier during installation, so I recommend it to everyone.

And on this I will end this short post, since the muse is leaving me and it is already dark outside the window, it's time to drink tea and go to bed. And you dear friends, do not forget to subscribe to blog updates, or even better, press Ctrl + D thus you will save the page to bookmarks and then definitely do not miss new posts.

Wish you, sunny mood even on cold winter evenings, good luck and success in everything.

With n / a Vladimir Vasiliev.

P.S. I suggest you watch a small review of the "Third Hand" tripod in video format, I found the first thing on YouTube, so don't scold me :-)

P.S. Friends, be sure to subscribe to updates! By subscribing you will receive new materials directly to your mail! And by the way, every signer will receive a useful gift!

Today I will tell you about a great idea of ​​how you can make a third hand for soldering with your own hands. This device will greatly facilitate the soldering process. The solder holder will provide anchorage for objects when working on precise projects. This is PCB soldering, electronic circuits, and even jewelry work. And just solder a couple of wires to some resistors, transistors, microcircuits, etc. much easier.
We will need:

• Piece of laminate 200 * 160 mm.
• Two metal plates 100 * 10 mm.
• Two metal plates 50 * 20 mm.
• Four corners.
• Metal plate 50 * 50 mm.
• Two crocodile clips.
• Nine screws and nuts for them.
• Copper wire.

Making a third hand for soldering
To begin with, I drilled three holes in a piece of laminate. One is on the edge, the other is 120 mm from it, the third is just on the side.


We fasten the corners to metal plates, to those that are wider and shorter. I took the plates from an old nursery metal constructor... If this is not the case, then it does not matter, just find any metal plates, and drill only required holes.


We fasten the long plates to the short plates. I thought that they were too thin, so I screwed two plates at once, respectively, in the end, I needed 4 pieces. So take thicker plates so that they do not bend under the weight. And we fasten the crocodiles to them, fasten them to the screws that are in the crocodiles.




Now everything that we screwed to each other is screwed to the laminate. You will need long screws, all screws, by the way, from one constructor. The simplest option is already ready, but we will not dwell on this.


Let's make a stand for a soldering iron. Copper wire will be required. We wind it around the marker, forming a spiral. The braid, of course, needs to be removed, if any. The spiral should be of such a height that the tip of the soldering iron is about 10 mm from the laminate. We form an eyelet from the lower end of the wire and screw it to the laminate. It was for this that the third hole was drilled.



We also drill two more holes in the laminate and metal plate... And we fasten it. It will be convenient to use solder, rosin, flux, etc. on this plate.


You can also attach a magnifying glass, but I don't need it, and I don't want to overload the place. This is where we can finish. We already have a third hand for soldering. I am using it already more than a year and happy with everything.

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Today I will tell you about a great idea of ​​how you can make a third hand for soldering with your own hands. This device will greatly facilitate the soldering process. The solder holder will provide anchorage for objects when working on precise projects. This is the soldering of printed circuit boards, electronic circuits, and even jewelry work. And just solder a couple of wires to some resistors, transistors, microcircuits, etc. much easier.
We will need:

• Piece of laminate 200 * 160 mm.
• Two metal plates 100 * 10 mm.
• Two metal plates 50 * 20 mm.
• Four corners.
• Metal plate 50 * 50 mm.
• Two crocodile clips.
• Nine screws and nuts for them.
• Copper wire.

Making a third hand for soldering

To begin with, I drilled three holes in a piece of laminate. One is on the edge, the other is 120 mm from it, the third is just on the side.

We fasten the corners to metal plates, to those that are wider and shorter. I took the plates from an old children's metal construction set. If this is not the case, then it does not matter, just find any metal plates and drill only the necessary holes in them.

We fasten the long plates to the short plates. I thought that they were too thin, so I screwed two plates at once, respectively, in the end, I needed 4 pieces. So take thicker plates so that they do not bend under the weight. And we fasten the crocodiles to them, fasten them to the screws that are in the crocodiles.

Now everything that we screwed to each other is screwed to the laminate. You will need long screws, all screws, by the way, from one constructor. The simplest version is already ready, but we will not dwell on this.

Let's make a stand for a soldering iron. Copper wire will be required. We wind it around the marker, forming a spiral. The braid, of course, needs to be removed, if any. The spiral should be of such a height that the tip of the soldering iron is about 10 mm from the laminate. We form an eyelet from the lower end of the wire and screw it to the laminate. It was for this that the third hole was drilled.

We also drill two more holes in the laminate and metal plate. And we fasten it. It will be convenient to use solder, rosin, flux, etc. on this plate.

It is well known to any radio amateur that, as a rule, two hands are missing during radio installation. You hold a soldering iron in one hand, tweezers in the other, and a third hand is also required to hold the board properly. Of course, you can solder without tweezers, but this is risky, tweezers serve as a heat sink, without it, you can easily overheat the radio component. In the simplest case, the holder - a "third hand" for holding small boards - is just a crocodile clip on some base.

To hold small parts, a similar design is specially produced by the industry.

A crossbar with two crocodile clips is hinged on a small cast-iron base.

Thanks to the hinges, the structure can be adapted to a wide variety of configurations.

And for work with small parts, the "third hand" holder has a magnifying glass.

The design is really very useful when working with small printed circuit boards, wires, separate radioelements,. If you don’t have it yet, I advise you to buy it. But the small mass of the base leads to easy overturning of the structure, so that it will not work to hold relatively heavy parts with it. Unless you screw a more massive piece of metal as a base. Review prepared Denev.