Attention Teacher's Pet Challengers!

1) I love having something to push me to complete a project.

2) Not having all the tools I need to complete the build, it is vacation time and all the tools at my disposal are at the school I am in So I am having a hard time to figure out how to make the electronics works for me.

1) I love having something to push me to complete a project.

2) Not having all the tools I need to complete the build, it is vacation time and all the tools at my disposal are at the school I am in So I am having a hard time to figure out how to make the electronics works for me.

Hi Benjamin,

I don't know what level of equipment your school has, but you can get by with very little, electronics doesn't have to be expensive.

For many years when I was of school age I just had an approx. $15 soldering iron (and small 2m tube of solder!), $10 wire cutters and a $15 multimeter - and the odd screwdriver, all purchased with the help of my parents.

The photos below show the type of level of equipment - as long as your iron has a small tip, it should be fine. Any cutters will do at a pinch, the

style of blade shown below is what you ideally want on them.

$10-$20 digital multimeter is always handy as a spare - I had an analog one but they are probably more expensive than digital now!

I already have many of the tools in the list appart from the multimeter and soldering iron. But the thing is that I really don't want to spend any amount of money on things that dont last or don't suit my needs... For exemple, I would like a soldering iron capable of doing really fine SMT stuffs (things that I do the most) and occasionally bigger and more power demanding stuff, and at our robotic club we have JBC's iron for SMD as well as some old trusty Weller's, if I would invest in something it would be in one of those but I would use it not that often since I am at school 70% of the year... same for the multimeters we have great Fluke's, we also have access to the electronic lab where we have 4 channel Hameg scopes and a lot more test equipment....

All that to say that, yeah tools can be cheap... but you also pay for what you get. I don't want to explode when measuring main's power, neither do I want to burn or lift traces on my PCBs which take forever to order

So on the week-ends and holidays at my parent place I will stick with twists to connect wires and my old "LED survival voltage detector of the doomsday" , for now ...

Here I just needed to solder a bunch of wires together and connect one mosfet and one resistor (You wouldn't buy an iron even the cheapest one for that, would you ?)

Anyway, I will keep putting money aside until I have my Weller soldering station and a brand new Fluke 87. And when this day come I know that those tools will follow and serve me for a very long time