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Cheap SMD soldering tweezers from Ebay

I'm making a 3d-printed support to combine two cheap soldering irons to make a pair of tweezers for SMD components.

adriajunyent-ferreadria.junyent-ferre
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I find soldering tweezers incredibly handy but they are not very common and tend to be very pricey. Ebay is currently flooded with USB soldering irons that sell for £5 and work surprisingly well. I decided to make a 3d-printed mount so I could combine two of these irons and make a pair of soldering tweezers. I have better soldering tools but I thought this would make an interesting little 3d-printing project. I've gone through two or three iterations of the design. The latest prototype works reasonably well even though there's still room for a few minor improvements. A video showing me using the tool to desolder SMD resistors is linked below.

The part was designed using Solvespace and the part was printed using Cura in an Ultimaker 2+ Extended with fast print settings, light infill, 0.4 mm nozzle, PLA and support material.

preview_v4.slvs

Solvespace model of the preview with the irons installed in place

x-solvespace - 990.87 kB - 12/02/2016 at 22:46

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preview.stl

This is a preview 3d model including a model of the irons in place.

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 33.48 kB - 12/02/2016 at 22:46

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muntatge_v4.slvs

Solvespace model of the whole part

x-solvespace - 739.67 kB - 12/02/2016 at 22:46

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frontissa1_v4.slvs

Solvespace model of the piece that holds the iron in place

x-solvespace - 339.93 kB - 12/02/2016 at 22:46

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iron.slvs

Solvespace model of the iron

x-solvespace - 133.66 kB - 12/02/2016 at 22:46

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Gregor wrote 05/03/2019 at 09:56 • point

I've been using this for some time and I love it. Thanks!

I made a version of this which is a bit easier to print and holds the soldering irons a bit sturdier. Also, with this version the tips can touch each other.

http://www.krekr.nl/content/cheap-smt-solder-tweezers/

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Dave Z. wrote 12/19/2016 at 22:38 • point

Ahoy! Love this idea, and after reading the HaD article, I picked up a couple irons and a dual-outlet USB power supply off Amazon.

I designed a similar part that doesn't require any support material and seems to work pretty well (at least with the irons I got). STL file is up here: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/desoldering-tweezers-from-two-usb-soldering-irons

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adria.junyent-ferre wrote 12/19/2016 at 22:44 • point

Great stuff! I think i'll print your design or make a variation myself. It looks simple and effective.

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jupdyke wrote 12/07/2016 at 21:36 • point

What size components are you removing in the video?

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adria.junyent-ferre wrote 12/08/2016 at 09:38 • point

I think they were 1206.

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Involute wrote 12/07/2016 at 18:25 • point

Just bought a couple of irons on eBay and uploaded your .stl to Shapeways and ordered a print (don't have my own 3D printer).

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adria.junyent-ferre wrote 12/08/2016 at 09:41 • point

sorry, I first thought you said you ordered a pint. It takes 45 minutes to print so perhaps that would be a sensible idea if you owned the printer. How much does it cost to get this printed from Shapeways? I'll feel a bit bad if you don't like the result.

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Involute wrote 12/08/2016 at 14:14 • point

$6.67 to print in black strong and flexible plastic, $4.99 to ship, $11.66 total.  Don't worry about it; I'm willing to risk it.  You might want to edit your post, though, to include the material you used and whether the dimensions are mm or inches.  It's a pretty safe guess it's inches, but why make people guess

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adria.junyent-ferre wrote 12/08/2016 at 18:37 • point

I see, well, I used PLA as material and printed with a 0.4 mm nozzle in an Ultimaker with "light infill" and "fast print" settings, I'm not sure about the implications of that. As for the size, the Solvespace model is in millimeters and I'm not really familiar with how this information is encoded in the STL files, never had an issue. I don't want to start a flamewar about measurement units but I'm some kind of metric hooligan.

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Involute wrote 12/20/2016 at 00:49 • point

Works fine in "black strong and flexible" material from Shapeways; don't even need wire ties.

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ZaidPirwani wrote 12/07/2016 at 14:34 • point

is Solvespace free... ?

looks awesome, looks like openscad - but I have not used either...  so.?

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adria.junyent-ferre wrote 12/07/2016 at 15:51 • point

Solvespace, in my modest opinion, is much better than OpenScad because you can define constraints (e.g. this line is perpendicular to this line) and build your model the way people do in professional solid modelling software such as SolidWorks, Inventor, etc..

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ZaidPirwani wrote 12/07/2016 at 13:33 • point

ordering the soldering irons JUST for this project.

NICE.

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adria.junyent-ferre wrote 12/07/2016 at 13:49 • point

Nice. Let me know if you have any issue printing it. I think it would be good to redesign it to print as two or three separate components and be able to print it without support material. I may give the design another go now that I see the project got some attention.

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ZaidPirwani wrote 12/07/2016 at 14:33 • point

would be COOL if this were a support-less 3D Print, whenever my designs have supports, the prints never come out good.

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Hemal Chevli wrote 12/04/2016 at 05:08 • point

+1 for solvespace. Really nice Project. Cheers!!

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adria.junyent-ferre wrote 12/06/2016 at 15:34 • point

Thanks! Solvespace is the best piece of software I've discovered this year. Great stuff.

  Are you sure? yes | no

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