Top 6 Tools

Hi Doug,

They do that (secure the pin so no hand needed for that), but sometimes it's not easy to grip the crimp tool with one hand for the squeezing motion. The above tool is better than many though, in that it has long lever arms so the force is quite light against any part of the body.

I found that insertion in a drawer of my new/used dedk at work. I don’t know how to use it. But I have lots of db25 & db9 connectors to learn with.

My top tools are a gas grill, spatula , and tongs.  

Working, building, testing, and fixing stuff makes me hungry. 

An E14 cooler for drinks next to my lounge chair would make this scene complete :-)   

1. DMM
2. Pliers
3. Screwdriver
4. Soldering Iron
5. Blue Masking Tape
6. Sharpie (black and white)

You might argue that 5 and 6 are not "tools." But, I use blue tape for all kinds of activities. And being able to mark things is very important.

One of my storage boxes is dedicated to blue tape roles and boxes of sharpies.

5&6 are perfect.

I have a dedicated box for fasteners which are tools - blue tape, duct tape, electrical tape, hot glue gun, velcro, super glue, and tyraps

Do minigrabbers count as a tool? I couldn't imagine working on an electronics project with out my minigrabber stash 

Duct tape and hot glue definitely need to be stocked.

There are a lot of essentials that didn't make the final cut - I don't think solder sucker and safety glasses were mentioned yet

I have loads of grabbers, jumpers, clips, adapters and leads, and yet I never seem to have enough.

Never a truer word spoken.

When I worked in a shared lab I observed a strange phenomenon whereby certain items left in piles would appear to grow or disappear at different rates based upon their current quantity levels. Not dissimilar to Conway's 'game of life'. Never leave less than three knives unattended otherwise you were sure to lose them. Three or four used to be a pretty safe stable state. More than four and you would likely start accumulating more up until a threshold at which point you'd then lose about half of them in one fell swoop. It was similar with mini grabbers... I guess it's a fine line between where people think items are stored and where they think they can be freely obtained from.