I bought a new pcb holder

thermionic

I needed 98p of parts from CPC Farnell and was looking for something else to throw in and make it worth the postage, so I got this:

https://i.imgur.com/jIBqJzx.jpg

It was only £7-8 and a big improvement on the crappy crocodile clip “helping hands”.

prowla

That looks (erm) handy….

BillDL

For £8 that looks hard to beat, and you would be hard pressed to try and make something similar for any less than that.  I hate using the "helping hands" things devices.  They are fiddly to adjust and the base isn't usually heavy enough without adding an extra weight.  I see yours sitting in the background looking lonely and forgotten about already.

randella

Those 'helping hands' croc clip efforts are absolutely bloody useless. This bit of kit, on the other hand, looks genuinely helpful.

I've been watching a few YouTube electronic repair channels lately (My Mate Vince, Stezstix Fix) and they all seem to use these things.

Sporky

I used to like the helping hands for cable assembly, but with the teeth folded out flat so they didn't cut the cable sheath.

This doohickey looks much better for PCB work though. 

thermionic

I remember seeing these on Stew Mac and thinking they looked useful. I hadn’t seen them anywhere else until relatively recently, and was surprised how inexpensive they are. Great for building pedals.

ThePrettyDamned

That looks brilliant. Nice find. 

Kittyfrisk

From the Community Repair thread it looks like it has paid for itself already  

p90fool

I should get one of those, I usually use my big old orange PCB frame from when I was building 6-8 pedals at a time, but it's really cumbersome for one-offs.

digitalscream

Nice

If anyone's got a 3D printer and needs something like this, there are loads of similar designs over on Thingiverse:

https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=pcb+holder&page=1&type=things&sort=relevant