What do you guys use to hold your work or Pcb boards ???

I have a medium sized portable plastic vice that is pretty nice but I was thinking about picking up one of these...

At radio shack for $29.97 by me VS $80.00 or more everywhere else..



So lets see what you use ???



Thanks
Jason SR

 

Check Amazon for those. I got two for $15 and had a free shipping offer.
May not be still available at that price, but you'll find something less than $80.

 

I mostly work on small PCBs, and use a cheap set of helping hands from Harbor Freight. I removed the magnifier and attached the base to a 4" x 4" x 1 3/16" piece of quartz counter top so it wouldn't tip easily. I reinforced the shank on the alligator clips with a piece of golf tee to avoid crushing them.

I have a large PCB holder made by PanaVise; it's in the attic.

BTW, you can get those 4" by 4" quartz counter top pieces for free at counter top places. They use them as free samples.

 

I just love these vices. I picked mine up for a song from a company going out of business.

I just use the vice tabs, those that close with the wide edge perpendicular to the opening. They have a rubber shield to keep the work free of scratches, and you can get replacements when these get shredded.

 

Somebody gave me one of those little board holders. It works well enough for small stuff. When it doesn't work, I use wooden clothes pins, the kind with springs, to hold the board to a bigger board. Clothes pins also hold 2 wires on a piece of thick paper so I can solder the ends together.

 

On a slightly allied note, if anyone here has to solder or make up cables for the MS military style connectors.
They will know that there can be as many as 20 connections using 20g multicore cable.
I made wide wooden jaws for my PanaVise wide enough that when closed I drilled a 1.2" dia hole so that each jaw had the .6" radius arc, this way I can accommodate almost all of the MS series.
Max.

 

I mostly use a Panavise 333 "rapid assembly" (same arms as the model in the first post). It's especially good if you need to quickly alternate work between two sides of a board.

 

I do mostly repair work and this will work perfectly for me and for $29.99 you cant go wrong when they retail for $100 bucks thats not bad in my opinion.. Also remenber if you dont like it then you can sell more than what you paid for it....

 

@ #12,
Can you explain "Clothes pins also hold 2 wires on a piece of thick paper so I can solder the ends together. " --- my hands shake a little and I have difficulty soldering two parallel wires together. For example extending the leads of a thermistor.