Assorted Hand Tools

The shelf of specialist hand tools: everything smaller and finer than what is in the kit boxes.

You need it when the work has gone down to a scale where an ordinary screwdriver will not fit and fingers will not do: opening an instrument, undoing a screw in a recessed hole, placing an SMD part, removing a circlip.

What is here

• Precision screwdrivers — slim, with a spinning cap for your fingertip. Some have insulated handles, for working near voltage.
• Bit sets of several dozen: besides ordinary cross and flat, there are Torx, Pentalobe, Tri-wing and the rest of what phones and laptops are closed with. The handles are magnetic, so bits hold themselves.
• Tweezers, and plenty of them: straight and bent, very fine tips for small SMD, flat ones for films, black ESD ones for boards, and reverse-action ones that hold a part until you squeeze them.
• Small spanners and hex keys — for the screws that turn up in instruments and mechanisms.

Which to take

• For SMD — a fine tip and a light pair. An 0402 part is picked up with the very tips, not with the whole jaw.
• For live boards — the black ESD ones. An ordinary steel pair will short something it should not, first time.
• Reverse-action — for holding something for a long time without tiring: soldering, gluing, fitting small springs.
• Torx and Pentalobe bits are needed more often than you would think. Undoing a screw with the wrong bit means rounding out the head and then drilling it out.

How to use

1. Take the tool, work, put it back. This shelf only works that way.
2. Return bits to their own slot in the set, not to a pocket and not to a heap.
3. Do not put a bent pair of tweezers back among the good ones: with a bent tip it will not pick anything up, and you only find that out by trying.
4. If something is missing or broken, tell us.

Access

The shelf is in the hackspace room, so a plan that includes hackspace access is required. No induction is needed.