Whether you are an electronics hobbyist working on a personal workbench or are a professional developer working in laboratory conditions, there are several items that make working with today’s technology much easier. While much of the focus is directed to electrical equipment like multi-meters, it pays to always have a cache of non-electrical tools as well.
With that in mind, here is a non-exhaustive list of essential non-electrical tools to consider for your electronics workbench.
Safety Glasses
With safety being paramount, safety glasses are an item I cannot recommend enough. While every type of electronic assembly work has its own set of recommended personal protective equipment, safety glasses are probably the most universal. Whether you work with soldering equipment that may throw hot fragments, or if you work with common chemicals, abrasives, or even something as simple as a wire cutter; having a barrier between your eyes and your work can save you from painful injuries.
A key feature to check in a good pair of safety glasses is the presence of side shields. This is one of the core reasons why more conventional eyewear like ordinary glasses are no substitute. In the United States, rating standards such as ANSI Z87.1 ensure that rated safety glasses meet the basic requirements for the job.
PCB Holder
Having a proper printed circuit board (PCB) holder is one of my first recommendations for anyone working with circuit boards. The PCB holder comes in numerous shapes and sizes. Over the years, they have even garnered a number of appropriate nicknames, such as “helping hands.”
Much like its larger toolroom equivalent: the vice clamp; PCB holders will help you secure your work in progress while suspending it above your work surface. This is where many of the similarities end: as the smaller, lighter PCB holder is carefully designed to secure a PCB without damaging it.
Depending on your needs, the PCB holder may include attached accessories such as the indispensable magnifying glass. Others may include spring-loaded steel clamps that are similar to an electrical alligator clip. Very often, these accessories are combined. From personal experience, I find this type to be the least useful for PCB work since the clamps can rarely engage the PCB surface without scratching it in the process. However, these are still quite useful for securing more rugged electronic devices such as connectors or lightweight cable assemblies.
For PCB-related work, useful features to look for are rubber pads that will minimize any abrasion of the PCB surface. These devices may also include a swivel to allow easy repositioning and rotation of the work in progress without needing to fully disengage it from the rubber padding.
Retort Stand
The retort stand has been an indispensable tool for chemistry and its many related fields. It essentially serves the same purpose of the PCB holder—holding equipment in a fixed position, but it is not optimal for holding objects that are being worked on.
It is however very useful in holding low voltage, lightweight instruments and cabling. I’ve found this especially useful where desk space is very limited and I have a need to “go vertical,” rather than spread the equipment and wiring over a large area.
The associated retort stand clamps can easily swivel into position to hold small indicators in a readable position. Just note that the stands and their respective clamps are often conductive, and they are often made of ferromagnetic materials that may interfere with your work if magnetic fields are a factor.
Grounding Adapter
A grounding adapter is a little-known tool that is intended for control of electrostatic discharges (ESD).
ESD is an event caused when an object builds up a static charge only to discharge it into another object. The static shock you may feel on a dry day when you touch something metal is a prime example of an ESD event. These events—even though they seem insignificant—can wreak havoc on semiconducting and non-semiconducting components.
The ground adapter helps you bleed away your static charge into a properly grounded electrical outlet. On one end are the mechanical prongs. The device only connects to the safety ground connection and it does not connect to the high voltage portion of the circuit.
As a safety measure: these adapters should only be used with a very large resistance (typically more than 1 million ohms) between yourself and the safety ground. This large resistor will provide protection if the electrical outlet is improperly wired. A reputable ESD wrist strap will often provide this using a resistor hidden inside it. For electrical safety purposes: the electrical resistance between the ground connection and person wearing the wrist strap will typically be 1 to 10 million ohms.
This type of adapter is a helpful tool if your workstation does not yet have special outlets for this type of ground connection. But it should only be considered a temporary alternative to a professionally-installed grounding system.
Anti-Static Bags
Back on the subject of electrostatics is the anti-static bag. Ordinary plastic bags will build up an electric charge of their own through a process called tribo-charging. This will expose any electronics within to an ESD strike from the bag itself. And because of this: it is somewhat galling to see some parts vendors occasionally packing electronics into ordinary plastic.
Additionally, plastic does not provide protection from the very large electric fields that may be emanating from a charged object or person outside the bag. Think along the lines of foam packing materials.
There are two basic types of anti-static bags that I highly recommend for this purpose: dissipative bags and shielding bags.
- Bags are considered dissipative when their surfaces have a resistance between 10 kΩ ohms per square and 1 TΩ per square. This allows electrostatic charges to slowly dissipate across the bag surface, but doesn’t fully protect the bag contents from the outside world.
- Shielded bags will add a conductive foil to completely encapsulate the bag contents. The presence of conductive foil enclosing the contents in all directions creates a structure called a Faraday shield that will protect the object inside from excessively high electric fields as well as ESD.
Optical Magnification
This is another category that pairs well with any type of rework involving circuit boards. The increasing use of small and fine-pitch electronics makes tools like the magnifying glass, and the jeweler’s loupe more critical than before.
Beyond inspecting the electrical components themselves, a reliable magnifier can reveal micro-printed details, date codes, and even common material defects.
Infrared Test Strips
Of course, no level of optical magnification can reveal the infrared spectrum to humans. This part of the light spectrum is impossible to inspect visually, yet much like radio, it forms the basis of digital communications by way of fiber optics, wireless data standards such as IrDA, and countless proprietary signals that control home electronics.
The infrared LEDs for these applications often operate at wavelengths between 0.8 µm and 1.6 µm. For these devices, special infrared test strips can be placed into the path to glow with colors the human eye can see easily.
These test strips use a technique called phosphor up-conversion. This is performed using compounds that can absorb a portion of the infrared emission and then re-emit it at a shorter wavelength that people can see. The materials are an especially good match for the common gallium arsenide (GaAs) LED.
One caveat I must mention is that infrared LEDs—and especially infrared diode lasers—can still be unsafe to the eye. And LED output power should be one of your main safety considerations when operating an infrared light source.
Color-Coded Tie Bands
Another often-overlooked tool is the tie band. Also known as the zip tie for the sound it makes during application. The tie band is a fastening device that acts as a one-way zipper. The one-way function comes from a ratchet mechanism (the pawl) that engages tiny teeth along the tie band’s surface. Many of these devices can also be unfastened destructively or non-destructively by forcing the pawl backward with a small tool.
As an alternative to adhesives; they can help you secure lightweight objects like cables. Depending on your exact needs there are also specialty tie bands optimized to resist heavy loads, high temperatures, ultraviolet light, harsh chemicals, and other environmental factors. Common tie materials include nylon, polypropylene, and stainless steel. Biodegradable materials are also possible.
Additionally, many variants like the type featured here are also color-coded. This makes them a useful improvised tool for labeling wire and cable.
Wire Cutters
It will be difficult to get very far in most types of electrical work without a well-maintained pair of wire cutters. The purpose of these devices is to cut soft wire materials like plastic, copper, aluminum, and tin.
They also serve to strip away the insulation of an electric wire while leaving the underlying conductor unscathed. To fulfill this purpose, the exact wire gauge or wire cross-sectional area should be known ahead of time.
An essential part of owning one of these tools is keeping them well maintained. A device that is well-kept will consistently produce defect-free cuts with little conscious effort. A device that is rusty, loose, unlubricated or worn in any other way will cause accidental nicks in the underlying conductor. They can even break a wire strand outright: which should be considered a defect. To get the most out of your wire tooling, keep in them away from wet environments, avoid cutting hard materials (e.g. steel wire), and inspect them often.
Heat Shrink
Last but not least is heat shrink material. Heat shrink is a thin, tube-like material (typically insulative) that will reduce its radius when it is heated, but tends to retain most of its original length.
Depending on the rigors of the application, there are sizes and variations available for just about any commercial or industrial application. Some provide high resistance to mechanical abuse or chemical attacks. Others are UV-stabilized and weather-resistant for sustained outdoor use. Many variations will also include a layer of adhesive material that will melt as the material is heated. This not only secures the material in place but may help repel moisture from the protected surface for increased durability.
References
[1] Y. Mita, “Other phosphors,” in Phosphor Handbook, Boca Raton, FL, USA, CRC Press LLC, 1998, pp. 643-650.
[2] S. V. Galganaitis, Met. Trans., vol. 2, p. 757, 1971.
[3] W. M. Scott and G. Song, “Zip tie fastener with a non-releasable head and a releasable head”. U.S. Patent 9.266,654, 23 Feb. 2016.
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