A while back, I saw a YouTube video on how to professionally solder. It was an interesting watch.

Anyway, the guy had a part I never saw before. It looked like a plastic tool that was "U" shaped. The purpose of the tool was to properly bend the leads for resistors, caps, etc.

I can't remember what it was called and I've lost the YouTube video link.

Does anyone know what that could be?

Thanks.

_________________
Cat; the other white meat.

Maybe "resistor lead forming tool" as seen at
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2007/fi ... now-about/
"Five electronics tools you might not know about"
?

That's it!

Thanks.

_________________
Cat; the other white meat.

That would be a lead former. I have one here, which is like what Ed described. I almost never use it.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I went ahead and bought one. $5. I have plenty of tools I don't use. LOL

I can't say I would use it often but I have a certain project that I am currently building that has tons of resistors on it and I want them all to be "perfect". I'm even making sure the colored bands all point in the same direction where appropriate. Did I mention I have OCD? (seriously...most people joke...I actually do).

_________________
Cat; the other white meat.

The lead former is nice for getting the spacing right. While we were still doing thru-hole boards in our company, for greater density I laid them out with resistor lead spacing at 1/4" for 1/8W resistors. This did not leave enough room for normal lead formers. If doing it by hand, you could just hold the resistor body between two fingers and bend both leads down simultaneously with two fingers of the other hand. There always used to be advice against doing this; but that was from the days of carbon-composition resistors which were much easier to damage or break at the ends than carbon-film resistors are. The construction is different. In the millions of resistors we used, we never had a problem. Not a single one.

_________________
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

Ah, that's good to know. It sure is nice getting advice from people actually in the field doing real engineering.

Thanks!

_________________
Cat; the other white meat.

Actually, I wouldn't think of that as OCD. I do the same for a very practical reason: it is easier to verify that all resistors are correct if the color codes all point the same way. So on horizontally placed resistors the first band is to the left, and on vertically-placed resistors, the first band is toward the top. You can see this in the attached pic.


I found I could accurately form the leads with a small needle-nose faster than I could with the lead former, so that's how I do it. Neither of my POC projects use much in the way of axial leaded parts, so I don't have much forming to do. However, the ABS modules we build for outdoor large scale railroads have a fair number of resistors and diodes (it's mostly old-school technology involving relays—digital electronics don't do well in this sort of environment), so the needle-nose earns its keep, along with the flush-cutters.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Killing time whilst waiting for my assembler to assemble, I actually followed that link and read too much.

This bears repeating, as it may be one of the best quotes I've read in a while. It would make a nice signature line.