Sometimes Blu Tack is better than helping hands.
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
Good morning all…
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
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Correct, sometimes tack is better. Helping hands are not good for smaller things usually, becomes too fiddly.
Buying a pack right away, this is such a great idea!
L love slime
I have those helping hands.. the only time I've used them so far was to remove the magnifying glass off the top to get some extra magnification over my wearable loupes. They're just awkward!
Paint the pins with liquid flux. Takes care of the tarnished connections. Nice tip.
One advantage of helpiing hands is that unlike blu tac it doesn't melt and make a gooey mess with the heat of the soldering iron….. I suppose the secret is keeping the blu tack away from the soldering…..
Get yourself a flux pen.
Hi, what material is the white board ?
what about a holder seminar ??? 😂😂😂
One of my helping hands, has a 3rd slider and claw (taken off a different helping hands) making it easier to get parts into alignment in many cases. I think your method with blu tack may work better for certain things but it also looks more fiddly and time consuming. Maybe it's down to which way you're used to doing things.
Also I find helping hands easier to use if you drill holes through the iron base and bolt it onto a larger piece of metal, to add both more weight and extra stability from the larger footprint.
The plate metal I used on the base was aluminum, and since I didn't want it reflecting back much light in cases where it was precision work that needed light shining down towards it, I gave it a wire brush finish, then being lazy, instead of anodizing it I just soaked it in bleach for a minute to turn it a dull anti-reflective gray color. I suppose I could have painted it flat instead, but wanted to experiment with rapid oxidation of aluminum using bleach. It is not a "pretty" finish cosmetically, but from a utilitarian perspective, works fine to just prevent glare… plus I was all out of flat paint but had the tablespoon of bleach to spare.
What happens when you blue-tack an all-metal part for soldering and the heat flows through the part to the blue-tack? Smoke? Odor? General pandemonium?
way to think outside the box (once again). i appreciate this very much.
keep up the great work, Jilian!
Russ from Coral Springs, Florida, USA
That switch in a breadboard now really looks like a Morse key 😀
As I see almost nobody likes to use soldering paste nowadays. With a good quality soldering paste the solder would be attracted to the metal almost like a magnet, instead of barely sticking to it.
Great idea. Ill use it in the future.
this is a brilliant idea. thanks!
Hi Julian, your videos are fantastic , informative and I throughly enjoy watching them. I have learned a lot and new techniques. Thanks for your many projects and sharing them on YouTube. Question: what material is the white board your using to stick the Blu Tak to?