Setting up an electronics workshop
Couple of interesting points and takeaways from a dabbler and tinkerer of 40+ years:<p>Weller soldering station - I got gifted a professional, but dead, one of these in my youth, after the chap witnessed me heating an iron over an open flame to desolder components. Then he showed me how to repair it. I&#x27;ve been brand loyal ever since. That old iron sits in pride of place on a shelf in my office, but I later went and bought a new Weller, with digital control, and dual outputs to run two heads simultaneously at different temperatures, and also has a temperature lock on each output. A range of tips and a comfort grip handle makes all the difference in the world. Weller also make a good line of electronic work hand tools that are worth investing in. I also like the Weller irons because they can shut off automatically if you don&#x27;t touch them, then heat right back up super fast when you need them. How many people have gotten called away, accidentally left their iron on, and come back two days later to an odd smell. If you can afford&#x2F;justify a Metcal soldering station, get one of those instead. But don&#x27;t waste your money on a Metcal if you aren&#x27;t serious about your hobby. I am not serious enough to have a Metcal, but I very much like them and have used them.<p>That said, if you just want to get started, get a Pinecil iron. You won&#x27;t go wrong with it for 90% of what you want to do. You can have mine when you can pry it from my cold dead hands brought on by a lead solder induced coma.<p>Get yourself a few different tips for your iron. Avoid the cheap ones from Amazon, buy the branded ones for your iron.<p>If you do a lot of repair work, a desoldering station is a useful addition. Though wick and a good quality solder sucker goes a long way.<p>Get a cheap hot air rework station if you do any SMT work.<p>Buy solder. Try the cheap stuff. Then go pay for the good stuff. You&#x27;ll understand why. Use the thin stuff. Get a solder dispenser to put your reel on rather than fighting the reel. Buy flux. Buy cleaning wicks. Practice how to use them. You&#x27;ll get amazing results if you just solder for a few hours.<p>Sometimes, when you need to join a couple of wires, you don&#x27;t need to solder them. A heat gun and some no-crimp, self-soldering, heat-shrink butt connectors will do the job most of the time. Dewalt make a nice cordless heat gun and a pretty nice corded heat gun too.<p>I invested heavily in to Akro-Mils organizer storage. I had a number of the classic Akro-Mils organizers that I picked up at Weird Stuff years ago, that are unfortunately no longer made, and the clear plastic drawers have unfortunately degraded and chipped over time. I&#x27;ve bought the newer, flimsier ones, and built a custom cabinet to house them. Add in a 3D printer to the mix and a search on any STL website for Akro-Mils storage, and you have a lot of versatile little drawers. Currently my components and interesting bits of wire sit in 880 individual organizer drawers.<p>For breadboards, there&#x27;s a wide array of quality. You pay for what you get. Pay for good ones. Realize that bread boards eventually wear out.<p>Magnifying desk lamp - 3x diopter at least, 5x is better. Yes, video scope or stereo microscope is a good addition, but a decent magnifying desk lamp is essential.<p>Don&#x27;t forget your hand tools. Side snips, flush cut trimmers, wire strippers, Weha&#x2F;Wera&#x2F;NWS&#x2F;Weller pliers of various stripes, tweezers (cheap ones, but get a few different types), Weha screw drivers. An iFixIt screwdriver bits kit. Comfort grip Xacto knife with #11 blades. Metal engineers rule. Desk calculator with electronic formula functions. All these little tools are where you&#x27;ll go broke and also need to worry about organization.<p>Head mounted optivosor - get a cheap one.<p>For work holding, I highly recommend two of the suction mount Panavise devices, and a range of heads for different work. I also recommend a good pair of helping hands, but avoid the $10 junk you find on Amazon. Again, you get what you pay for, go to a jewelery making store and look for the helping hands they sell. You&#x27;ll pay through the nose, but you&#x27;ll never be frustrated with the damn things again. Mine set me back over $150. You can have the Pinecil iron when you can pry it from the cold dead helping hands setup that will still be holding it in the proper position long after I am dead.<p>Circuit diagnostics, Fluke for the meters, and then I go middle of the road for everything else, e.g. Rigol mid-level stuff. I could happily spend a fortune on this stuff, but I&#x27;m just a hobbyist. Handheld multimeter is good, benchtop multimeter is better. Have both. Dual or triple output benchtop power supply is a must have. Get two if your budget and desk space will stretch that far.<p>Fume extractor - Weller make a nice one, but any of them will do. Seriously, unless you are soldering hours per day, a cheap fume extractor with a carbon filter will do wonders for your enjoyment. If you are doing hours of day soldering, none of my advice matters as you have more experience at this than I do.<p>Soldering organizer mat - Weller or Hakko. Hang it up on your balcony for a couple of days so that the off-gassing doesn&#x27;t take over your workspace. Be aware, most organizer mats are not ESD safe. You can get nice ESD ones. You&#x27;ll pay beaucoup bucks for one that is worth the desk space. I like the Weller mat as it has little pockets to hold components and screws and interesting bits of wire.<p>Cordless drills - get a really nice, lightweight cordless drill, you don&#x27;t need anything that weighs a lot. Something to put a small hole in something else. I put Festool in my workshop, so I put Festool in my workbench, but a $50 Milkwaukee Fuel on special discount at Home Depot will do just fine.<p>Blue tape. Lots and lots of ****ing blue tape. You can use it to hold components in place, hold wires down while you solder, hold parts for assembly, hold a circuit in place that won&#x27;t stop skidding around. Cannot be used for gagging someone.<p>Don&#x27;t bother trying to stock an inventory of parts you might need (I am guilty of this), you&#x27;ll go broke fast. That said, having common stuff on hand is a no brainer. Sometimes though, it is nice having a lot of ingredients in stock so you can make whatever takes your fancy that day.<p>Not all alligator clips are created equal, and neither are Dupont wires. Inland make some nice cheap ones that won&#x27;t break the bank. Buy more than you think you will need. Avoid anything sold on Amazon. Go to a physical brick &amp; mortar electronics store, handle their cables, see if they have the good ones.<p>Buy a selection of headers and push together connectors, solder those to your perfboards. It makes assembly and disassembly much easier. You can salvage your SBC at a later date You can easily use little breakout boards. It makes transporting your project a lot easier.<p>Buy some buffer boards if you are like me and sometimes forget to pay attention to the amperage or voltage. Nothing quite like releasing the magic smoke from that over priced Raspberry Pi or Nvidia Jetson because you weren&#x27;t paying attention.