Useful Tools

You’ll need some tools for electronic construction. Here’s what you should consider buying. You’re unlikely to find all of these on the high street, especially since the demise of Maplin, although online outlets are plentiful.

A soldering iron is essential for all types of electronic construction other than bread-boarding. You need an electronics soldering iron, of course, as opposed to those intended for plumbing, but you don’t need to pay more than about £15 if you’re only going to use it occasionally.

Although not a tool as such, you’ll need to get your hands on some solder. Avoid plumbers’ solder in favour of the fine (approximately 1mm) flux-cored solder that’s used in electronics construction.

You’ll need pliers and wire cutters, but don’t use generalpurpose ones that you’ll find in DIY stores, which are too large. Instead, get a pair of small snipe nose pliers and a pair of small electronics type wire cutters. £10 should get you both.

A couple of small screwdrivers – one flat blade, the other cross-head – are handy for use with screw terminals and the screws that fasten the lids to boxes if you want to house your project in an enclosure. These are widely available for just a couple of pounds.

With care you can strip the insulation from the ends of wires, so they can be soldered onto a PCB, using wire cutters. However, an easier option is to use a proper wire stripper, of which there are several types varying considerably in price.

If everything goes well you won’t need one, but it’s a good precaution to have some means of removing components from PCBs. Called a de-soldering pump or, colloquially, a solder sucker, this spring-loaded tool sucks the solder off the board once you’ve melted it with a soldering iron.