If you’ve been following my writing, you may have noticed my general disdain for soldering. I much prefer screw terminals or spring connectors. I must admit though that after “discovering” better tools like a TS-100 soldering iron (featured here on Hackaday) and constructing a good helping hands assembly from coolant hoses (also featured on Hackaday) that I don’t find it nearly as bad. If the room is there, I still prefer screw terminals, but for smaller devices, sometimes this is a necessary, and not really that bad, evil.
Now I’m on the lookout for more creative tool ideas that help improve my electronics bench skills. Here’s an interesting one. Often you need to hold voltmeter or oscilloscope probes on leads while doing something else. You might be tempted to shove them directly into your helping hands’ alligator clips, but for a better solution, consider a pair of these probe holder that work with helping hands. They tighten directly into the type of hands that you’ve probably seen with a magnifying glass in the middle—keeping two leads on the part as needed.
While you may have moved on from that type of fixture, perhaps you could use it as your dedicated probe hands, leaving your more capable helpers free for more strenuous tasks like handling boards and wires.
