reccomend tweezers for surface mount soldering?

Hi - recently I was reccomended to get some tweezers to assist with surface
mount soldering. I looked through the Digi-Key catalog (I do about 99% of
my ordering through digi-key) and they had quite a few different types. Can
anybody reccomend some good general purpose tweezers? Preferrably ones that
Digi-Key stocks. I should mention that most of my surface mount soldering
of discretes is with parts in 0805 or SOT-23 packages.

Thanks!

-M. Noone

 

Mike,

You'd probably want to have a small selection. I've always found that
a curved set (like digikey EROP7SA-ND) is nice, especially when
handling small SMT parts under a microscope. A couple of straight
tweezers like digikey EROP3CSA-ND are nice. Finally, a nice "reverse
action" set is nice to give you that extra pair of hands sometimes
(digikey XHT412-ND). These are all pretty inexpensive.

Alan

 

I like a stubby little Solingen (German) "La Cross Premier" pair that
I got for $10 or $15 at a drug store chain (Shopper's Drug Mart). They
are a fair bit stiffer to operate than the typical fine tip tweezer,
and the relatively fat and square tips meet properly.

For *very* fine tips, good steel is better than SS, IME. That kind of
tips tend to be brittle rather than soft, so they will snap off rather
than bend all over the place if abused a bit. I don't have the really
good Swiss one I used to have anymore, but I don't seen anything in
that class for sale at Digikey. They were probably $30 or more a pair.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

I use Bernstein 5-031 Titan I don't know if it is available at digikey, but
it is not magnetic and also doesn't get soldered. You can use it even for
very small parts

 

www.contacteast.com is where I obtained my Swiss "Cobaltima" by Excelta
cobalt alloy tweezers. A bit pricey but *very* tough and menacingly sharp.



--
_______________________________________________________________________
Christopher R. Carlen
Principal Laser/Optical Technologist
Sandia National Laboratories CA USA

NOTE, delete texts: "RemoveThis" and "BOGUS" from email address to reply.

 

This place has them listed for only $46 apiece.

http://www.all-spec.com/cgi-bin/fccgi.exe?w3exec=showitem&w3site=ALLSPEC&w3path=cat&w3product=3C-CO




Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

Hello Michael,

I just bought a few at places like Walmart and they work fine. Other
than that I second what Spehro suggested. If tools like this come from
Solingen in Germany it is "the good stuff". Not just tweezers but also
kitchen knives and things like that.

Regards, Joerg

 

Can you get those with the cushion handles, those are much easer to work
with IMHE, allowing the part to be rotated in your fingers like chopsticks.

"A man without his favorite tweezers is like a woman without a mirror",
Harry

 

I use a set of 4 tweezers, 1 each straight and curved nonmagnetic for
placing parts only, and 1 each straight and curved heavier duty steel
tweezers for unsoldering. Any tweezer will pick up small smt parts,
but only a clean and dry nonmagnetic tweezer can reliably let go of
them. Any residual magnetism or tiny bit of flux on your tweezers
will make many parts stick to one side of the tweezer when you are
trying to let them go. Depending on how you solder, this may or may
not be an issue - some people always put solder paste on the board
before placing components, and components placed on pasted pads will
stick more to the board than the tweezers. Solder paste has a short
lifetime on a preheated board, so I like to lay out groups of 20 or 30
parts next to their pads on the preheated board, apply paste to the
pads for those parts, quickly move the parts onto their pasted pads,
solder with hot air, then repeat for the next group of parts until
done. This prevents the solder paste flux from losing activity (it
appears to dry out) before soldering, but requires the clean
nonmagnetic tweezers to be able to let go of parts on the dry board.

 

Put "dumont tweezers" (no quotes) into the search space in
< http://www.dogpile.com > and pick your dealer and model. I don't
believe anyone makes a better product.

Ted

 

Looks like everybody has their favorite models. Might as well throw
mine in:

http://www.folica.com/Rubis_Cosmetic__d110.html

They are particularly nice for picking 1206 and smaller parts (like
resistors) out of tape strips. Expensive, but indispensible.

-- jm

 

Wow, and I thought it only was tweezers being marketed to technical markets
that could command high prices!

Personally, I love my curved-tipped Exceltas. I don't know which model... I
recall they weren't cheap (>$20), but there were others that were even
spendier than were simply out of my price range.

 

Probably come up with a load of Groucho Marx related stuff

 

Look for:
* Self-closing (squeeze to open) - it saves you from dropping a lot of
tiny parts, and gives your hand a break
* Solder won't stick - nickel plating seems good for this;
ceramic/carbon would probably; maybe stainless
* Non-magnetic - it only takes a tiny charge to make tiny parts stick to
the tool
* Sharp tip - more important for tiny parts like 0402

I really like these ($5) - they're stiff, sharp, but not non-magnetic:
http://www.jensentools.com/product/group.asp?parent_id=3665
These look similar:
http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?Ref=228016&Row=6497&Site=US

To fine-tune adjustment, dental probes work really well. (I'll suggest
a technique if you're interested.) Also for picking at SMD legs to test
for poor solder joints.
http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?Ref=226981&Row=277259&Site=US

This is a handy alternative if you do much assembly:
http://www.zeph.com/zt3web.htm
For 0402 and 0805, the 22-gauge (black) 1" needles can be formed into a
tiny pickup tip. http://www.zeph.com/applicator_tips.htm

Cheers,
Richard

 

Often you can make a suitable vacuum pump out of a diaphragm-type
aquarium pump with a few minutes' work - attach another piece of
tubing or flip the valve. I forget who wrote about doing just that-
Dobkin maybe.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany