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Soldering magnifying glass

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Xtreme Barton

Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2004
Can anyone point me in the right direction ? I would really like to have a larger sized one that can be mounted.. I have a super small job I would like to attempt but cant find anything local that is useful

Im trying to solder a micro usb charging port. Very small leads and 5 of them need to be soldered ..

Is this called smt soldering ?
 
Other's around here have been known to use helping hands with the magnifying glass attachment:
http://www.amazon.com/SE-MZ101B-Helping-Hands-Magnifying/dp/B000RB38X8/ref=pd_cp_hi_0

I can't vouch for that one specifically, but its cheap enough that I would recommend trying it. Also, searching for helping hands soldering should get you other similar items.

Dunno how much soldering you've done, but in the little bit I've done, being accurate manually felt more challenging when using a magnifying glass and I'd often find myself reverting back to direct vision. This was with GPUs and very tiny pads and caps, probably about the worst kind of tiny soldering... Was consistently trying to find the balance between being able to see what I was working on and getting the soldering iron where it needed to be. Having helping hands helped anyway, even though I had a hard time deciding magnifying glass or not.
 
I bought a cheap led magnifier headlamp. It worked nice for me, but took a bit of getting used to. I was soldering 0603 at the time.

The cheap one was junk, and wore out after using it twice. If I were going to be doing some more 0603 work, I'd be getting something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Bausch-Lomb-Magna-Visor-Lens/dp/B003E6OJ9U

This is what I had before. Not worth buying but worked pretty well the time or two before it broke. http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Jewelers-Lighted-Magnifier-Visor/dp/B005VIG6TA/ref=pd_sbs_hpc_3 the part where the lens meet the glasses wears out quickly.
 
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