Ok, i bought a fine tweezers, but one tiny bit out of alignment of the tips and the SMD piece is on its way to the black hole that lives beneath my work bench. I bought 10 pieces of a SOT23 chip and I lost 4 to the floor!

I just bough a handheld SMD manual vacuum placement tool from Ebay. There seems to be tens of different models, but they all look pretty much alike. I don't see how they can be of much use. They have a button on the side that you push to create a vacuum in the cylinder, so you place the suction pad over the resistor, squeeze the button, and nothing really happens.

I just got one today and it isn't able to pick up and place a 1206 SMD resistor. The resistor kinda sticks to the suction cup, and so without any vacuum it is possible to pick up a 1206 resistor, but once I am trying to place the part on the target PCB, it has to be shaken off.

I just wanted to warn others not to waste their money.

Perhaps there is a better way?
Also on Ebay I saw 15x more expensive motor-powered vac pickup up tool, but it looks clumsy to use, it has a straight hypo needle that fits on the end of the handle, and it creates a vacuum using a cheap vacuum pump (made for perhaps an aquarium). It works the same as aboe, a small cylinder with a hole in the pipe cylinder handle is the way to release the vacuum, and you fit suction cup onto the hypo needle on one end, also a piece of cheap plastic tubing that connects the other side of the cylinder(handle) to the vac pump. Supposedly, you can slide on very tiny and easy to loose plastic pickup up suction cups. There is only one that is even small enough for 1206, just three suction pieces supplied, so one of each size and if you loose them or they melt or wear out, well..

What does work? I am ending up too much on my hands and knees on the floor!

 

Have a look at this DIY solution.

 

I had a tech that was very good with one of these.

 

I do these manually, no problems, but sure, parts get lost sometimes

 

Yes, I am sure you could find 0603's and SOT23's all over my floor.

I use curved tweezers as in the above post. They work pretty well.

Bob

 

As with anything make as cheap as possible.. Stuff happens..
They are literally a fish tank air pump and a suction cup..

Normally with the right size suction cup that hasn't been deformed and can seal properly its a matter of pressing button..picking part up.. releasing button and it comes right off.

"Quality" isn't cheap.... Junk is..

 

Wow, that guy in video, he's got really hairy hands!

Hmmm, the video says the vac approach works, others say stick with tweezers.
What would be kinda neat is a tweezers that functioned like a visegrip tool, in other words, it locks the tweezers grip in place upon the object being moved around, then to place, you press a release button, bingo..no slipups! Why is something like that hard to find?

Hmmm.,Maybe something like sliding a piece of heatshrink tubing over the tweezer arms would work to lock the part for transport?

 

Wow, that guy in video, he's got really hairy hands!

Hmmm, the video says the vac approach works, others say stick with tweezers.
What would be kinda neat is a tweezers that functioned like a visegrip tool, in other words, it locks the tweezers grip in place upon the object being moved around, then to place, you press a release button, bingo..no slipups! Why is something like that hard to find?

Hmmm.,Maybe something like sliding a piece of heatshrink tubing over the tweezer arms would work to lock the part for transport?

Look at your pharmacy or medical supply story (even eBay). The locking tweezers exist.

Also look for reverse (inverted tweezers) that you squeeze to release instead of squeeze to close. Here is a variety pack.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/FIBER-GRIP-...783?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c5c02591f

 

You can get good tweezers from Mouser (or Digikey) for $4 each. No need to worry about eBay quality.
I use the EROP7SA and EROP3SA for SMT work; they are fine down to 0402. I haven't tried them at 0201 or smaller; I can't see those things...

/mike