Time for a small product review…
As I’ve grown older my eyesight has deteriorated and while my hands aren’t actually shaking, they are not as steady as they were in my youth. Sadly, I have not grown that extra arm that would’ve been really useful for many of my DIY projects. Evolution? Are you listening..?
I have been using a couple of different “3rd Hand” tools and magnifying glasses when soldering for several years already. The 3rd hand tools that I’ve been using so far have been cumbersome and not very precise. Basically alligator clamps on a bendable arm connected to a base. While they did the trick, they were hard to fix to an exact position and I always had to bend the arm back and forth to get it to hold the parts where I wanted them.
Some time ago I learned about a Swedish (Bork, bork! You know, the country that made SAAB, Viggen, IKEA) product called Omnifixo. To be honest, at first glance It looked rather cheap and simple. That was until I started to look closer at it. Ok, a video emerged in my youtube feed showing Norm from Tested reviewing it and since he and Adam Savage are two of my heroes I decided to get one.
The video is a couple of years old already so that means I’m late to the party, but that probably means I’m not the only one who needed to hear about this.
I ordered my Omnifixo a week ago and today it arrived in a padded envelope in my mailbox.
It’s small, but big enough for 99% of my soldering needs.
The clever idea behind the Omnifixo is the magnetic ball joints and parallel clamps. The clamps hold the parts really well and the magnets makes it really easy to adjust their position.
Even when I used 2 clamps to hold this PCB, I could move the PCB over on its side, to get to the underside, without loosening the clamps.
The set comes with 4 clamps and I can’t imagine a project where I would need more..?
The manual shows some nifty tricks that tells me that the Omnifixo is a well thought through and cleverly designed piece of kit.
Bought and paid for with my own money but I thought it was worth mentioning as I know we have a few fellow tinkerers on here…
