Ten most needed tools for the electronics DIYer
I decided to write an article on the ten most needed tools for the beginning Electronics DIYer. This is not an all inclusive list, and there are other important tools, but this is a good starting point for anyone interested in starting to play with circuits, and doing their own mods. (These are in no particular order)
10. Soldering Iron – There are many soldering irons you can get, and some are better than others. I started out with a cheap little soldering iron from Wal-mart, and quickly found that I did not like it. When I got to undergrad, I bought another fairly cheap soldering iron from the supply store on campus. It is an Elenco SR2B 25 Watt iron. A 25 watt iron is a good multi-purpose iron, and will serve the beginning DIYer well. I started getting into TV repair near the end of college, and my little 25 Watt iron was not enough to change large capacitors, or large heat sinks. I had to hold it on the joint for like a minute. I went to Radio Shack and bought a 40 Watt iron. This think is a lot bigger and heats up faster also. It is a 64-2071C. Now if you want to have a really good iron, you can’t beat a Solder station. A good one for many uses is the Weller WES51. This is a 50 Watt variable heat soldering station. Weller makes good soldering irons. But for the beginner, a good Radio Shack 25 W iron will do the trick.
You can also get this at Mouser
9. Digital Multi-meter – A good multi-meter is essential for any project. When buying a multi-meter, it is important to make sure it has the most needed features. First, it needs to measure AC/DC voltage, AC/DC Current, Resistance, Capacitance, and it is nice if it has a continuity checker. Fluke makes some of the best digital multi-meters, but sadly are rather pricey. A good one for your money is of course the Fluke 111. It will do all of these functions, and is a nice beginner model. I sadly don’t have one, but do have an $80 dollar one from Radio Shack. (It is an Extech 22-816)
8. Set of micro screw drivers – This is a must need for any DIY project. These can be bought at Wal-mart, or at any hardware store. What I recommend is the Kronus set from Radio Shack. It is non-magnetic, so it won’t hurt your sensitive parts. This kit comes with some other needed micro heads such as torx bits, hex bits, pozi bits, and hex round ball bits. Some times things like cell phones have strange screws, and you need these hard to find bits.
7. Solderless bread board – This is a must for any DIYer. If working on a circuit, it is always important to bench test it and make sure it works. I use the kind that has multiple holes where you can stick your wire in it. Also along with this, it is nice to buy a pack of 10-15 alligator clip leads. These are essential to making fast connections.
6. Solder remover
Removing solder from a component or board is always important, and without the right tool, it is nearly impossible. There are several ways of doing this. The first is using a solder ribbon. This is a ribbon that is placed on the solder that supposedly wicks the solder away. I have never been good at using it. I hear if you can use it, that it is very nice. Another way is to use a rubber bulb. To do this, you heat up the solder, and suck it up in the bulb. This never worked for me either, because the solder would get stuck in the bulb, and it was annoying. They do make a de-soldering iron, but I figure it is overkill also. For my tastes, the most useful, as well as fun solder remover device is the solder vacuum pump. This is a device that has a spring loaded piston that will pop up on the press of a button causing a suction action. These are great, and are a must need for any DIYer.
5. Good tool box – It is necessary to keep all of your tools in a nice organized box. I use a cheap plastic tool box with a tray that comes out. It is almost too small now, but still gets the job done. It is also useful to get a tackle box with multiple small compartments to keep all of your collected electrical components in, such as resistors, capacitors, transistors, and diodes. I do recommend keeping many of these common components on hand. Nothing is worse than a quick run to Radio Shack while trying to do some fun project.
4. Oscilloscope – Now, I contemplated putting this into this list. It may not necessarily be in the top ten most needed tools for a beginner, but if you ever want to analyze signals coming out of a device, this is a necessity. It is also nice analyzing what is coming out of a microcontroller. I never could afford one, but luckily my fiancee’s father loaned me one. It is a nice Tektronix 2220
3. Hands free Solder man – This is a must need for anyone trying to solder. Think about it. If you have your solder in one hand, and the iron in the other hand, and are trying to solder two different components together. This in my opinion is the hardest part of learning to solder. Now soldering to a PCB is not hard at all, but soldering test leads onto a LED probe, can be a very hard task. This device takes a lot of the headache out of soldering, so it deserves a place on this top ten list.
2. Wire Strippers – In order to do any good DIY electronics project, you have to have various sizes of wires. These wires have to be stripped, which can be a pain. It is necessary to have a good set of wire strippers. They have neat ones that are preset, and when you stick the wires in, two blades scrape over the wire and strip it for you. This is nice, and fast, but is not necessary. A good wire stripper that I use has different size holes for each wire, and you simply place the wire in the hole, and it basically does the job for you. You can get it at Radio Shack. These may not be the best strippers, but they also crimp, and they get the job done.
1. Solder iron stand – Now this may seem silly, but is actually crucial also. It is important to have a good stand to place the hot wire. I use the one from Radio Shack that has the sponge. This keeps your soldering iron clean, and gives you a place to wipe off excess solder.
I would like to hear all of your feedback about what kind of tools you like to use. Go to DIY Live Forums and we can all discuss it.
19 Responses to “Ten most needed tools for the electronics DIYer”
Leave a Reply
Nice article, Bad spelling though, Wesler is Weller (a very long-term well-established name in soldering). Krunos is Kronus (a fairly new line with Radio Shack.) ( **EDIT-Thanks for catching those.. I fixed the mistakes. I wrote this article in a hurry-EDIT**) Note that many of the tools that the Shack carries are also carried at Sears, available as individual tools (or sets), and carry the Craftsman guarantee, break it and they replace it. This has held hobbyists and garage-jockeys in good tools for decades!
As for sponges, they are an absolute requirement, but cheap kitchen sponges made of any kind of plastic material are a danger: they’ll melt onto your iron! I get the best results with sponge intended for iron use, and the Plato CS-17 is a good buy at $15.53 (or so). It’s an 8.5″ x 17″ sheet. Cut it to fit your stand’s dish or to fit into an ashtray, cut a hole in the middle (to wipe globs of solder into, come on, we all do it sooner or later!) and you’re good to go. One sheet should last for a very long time, and it’s way smarter than paying 10-15 bucks for a 2″x3″ pre-shaped one! (My listing for it is via Newark in One (www.newarkinone.com) 98H2582)
Solder wick is a reasonable if pricier alternative for the soldersucker, and where the sucker may have difficulty getting a good grip on molten solder in some cases, the wick usually gets it all. You may have to add a bit more solder to ensure the wick can connect, though. Wick is available from a number of manufacturers and can be found at most of the major suppliers (newark, mouser, digi-key, jameco, etc.)
The cheaper radio-shack meters are a very good alternative to the more expensive ones. They all have limitations (even the Flukes, although they have very clear specs on the limits of their meters) and using a meter that you don’t understand the limits of is sometimes as accurate as using a pair of chopsticks. Note also that some cheap digital meters autorange and have no control to choose the range to use: the latest (yellow rubbery coated) RS meter has a control for choosing range or letting it autorange, and will also select AC/DC automatically, if you let it, but lets you choose that setting as well. This is good: a meter can’t decide what you’re trying to measure correctly all the time! But again, be sure that what you are reading is what you think you are measuring: if the meter is auto-reading DC and you wanted to know the AC component, it’s not your friend.
The solderman extra-hands thingie is a real luxury, far more than the oscilloscope. A good solder connection starts with a good mechanical connection, even in the hobby world. Otherwise, the solder connection will be constantly stressed, and it’s really not meant to be a robust physical join. It’s not that hard to bend contacts/wires to make a good physical connection that can be soldered. This makes a set of good hand tools (missing from your list) far more important than the hands-free jig. Minimum should be a set of wire cutters and a small long-nose pliers with cross-hatch on the jaws. These can be gotten at a Sears tool store for under 10 bucks each (far under, really). After this, and only upon real need, you can add long-nose pliers of other sizes with and without gripping jaws, flush-cut wirecutters, and/or vise-grips, but any of those are going to need a real reason to get to start with. Once they’ve been acquired, though, they’ll become a constant pleasure to have.
I’d categorize what you have here as
Necessary for effective DIY:
1) good soldering tool (temp-controlled iron with a stand and a sponge)
2) solder sucker or wick
3) tool organizer/box
4) good multi-function meter (with good leads!)
5) good strippers (although the far-less good multifunction strippers/crimpers/screw cutters are more common, they really fail early and often)
6) good hand tools (you list the multi-bit screwdriver)
7) oscilloscope if you can get it
and add to this,
under 3, wire cutters and small long-nose pliers, x-acto knife, crazy glue
The solderless breadboard is possibly one of the worst things a DIY’er can do to themselves, though: it wears out very quickly, it adds resistance and reactance in unpredictable, undesirable ways, you can’t clean the contacts, you can’t stick two wires in next to each other in the same contacts because the larger one prevents the contacts from closing on the smaller one (which generally flops around or becomes intermittant!).
Good soldering habits, good wick, good hand tools (the minimum listed above) and a little patience makes dead-bug/breadboarding far preferrable, lets a DIY’er get into much more sensitive and higher-frequency fun, and leaves the parts as usable afterwards as being pushed into a solderless breadboard and futzed with trying to get good contacts and make spurious effects go away!
Thanks for these great comments. Please leave feedback, and I will compile them into a DIY Live toolbox including suggestions from all of the readers. Harold is exactly right. A good power supply is very nice. Also, a must is a function generator. It is nice to generate those square waves, and sin waves to test your circuit with. Thanks for all of your suggestions. I would love you to join my forums. People with your level of knowledge would be an invaluable resource.
two reccommended solder station deals-
CSI $35 40W
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/7307
Hakko $76 60W
http://www.kiesub.com/hakko936.htm
[...] Check out the article at DIYlive.net for details on the recommended types and brands of the various tools as well as the comments from the readers with their thoughts on what you must have. [...]
Thanks man. It is easy to install blog software. There are tons of themes you can choose from. I found one, and then changed it to what I wanted.
Thanks, I installed wordpress, on my friend’s server. I then found
a template and totally changed it to what I wanted. My fiancee helped
me with the design, and then the banner was created by one of my
readers. I then changed the color theme a little to fit the new
banner. I am glad you like it.
All of my feeds go through feedburner at http://feeds.feedburner.com/DiyLive
You can use any reader you like. I like bloglines.
[...] But if you want to know what this nerd lusts after, check out here and here [...]
[...] Tools for DIYer [...]
[...] DIY Live » DIY Archive » Ten most needed tools for the I started out with a cheap little soldering iron from although the far-less good multifunction strippers/crimpers/screw Check out the article at DIYlive.net for details on the [...]
Check out O-Scopes on eBay. You can get a good working analog for decent prices.
Thanks for sharing
The High Cost Of Bad Credit And What You Can Do About It
Have you being turned down for credit cards, loans or mortgages? Do you want to improve your credit rating?
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:
great post !!
I read a few of your other entires.where can i subscribe to your blog?
Thank you for sharing.
SAFETY – SAFETY
It sounds Geeky, but Safety Glasses are a must.
Soldier and cut flying pieces scrap metal can be dangerous.
credit repair company…
“In my opinion one of the biggest problems with our credit crunch and high foreclosure rate is bank reliance on FICO scores. FICO scores do a good job of reporting an individuals past history of repayment of debt. The biggest problem is the scores do…
[...] Survival Toolkit for the New Credit World | Ideas You Can Bank OnWebberBlogs.com » Blogging – A Critical Addition to Every Internet Marketing ToolkitUSB Drive Systems Intelligent Speculator | Carnival of Financial Planning 09-18-09Ext JS – Blog5 Ways to Help Out Jobless Friends and Family | Debt Relief BlogArmy Rescue Tape: Self-Fusing Repair Tape Fixes Anything | Mark's Technology NewsDIY Live » DIY Archive » Ten most needed tools for the electronics DIYer [...]
Also, a must is a function generator. It is nice to generate