If you have terrible vision, what do you use when soldering?

GaryMcT

Active member

Donor 2011
Joined
Jun 4, 2009
Messages
2,346
Reaction score
24
Location
Carnation, Hawaii
If you have terrible vision, what do you use when soldering?

I'm using a 3x magnifier lamp with a tiny 2.5x magnifier added sometimes when soldering, and I still can't see what I'm doing. What do other folks do for this sort of thing if you have poor vision?
 
semv5.jpg


When I used to do surface-mount soldering, We had microscopes that helped with the little-bitty stuff.

Otherwise you should look into something like this:

http://www.boommicroscopes.com/

I remember seeing one advertised in Gameroom Magazine or something for a fairly reasonable price. You could hook it up to a TV....
 
I'm using a 3x magnifier lamp with a tiny 2.5x magnifier added sometimes when soldering, and I still can't see what I'm doing. What do other folks do for this sort of thing if you have poor vision?

Most people send their soldering work to Jawhn because he is an expert at it...:D
 
I'm using a 3x magnifier lamp with a tiny 2.5x magnifier added sometimes when soldering, and I still can't see what I'm doing. What do other folks do for this sort of thing if you have poor vision?

I use one of these:

http://www.frys.com/product/1784994#detailed

I don't think that is the exact one I have. I don't remember paying that much for it, but I would pay that much because it's extremely useful.

I'm thinking of picking up a pair of the goggles like modessitt posted about.
 
I use a cheap pair of off the shelf reading glasses from time to time on real small stuff.
Think you can find them up to like 4x for under $10. (Walmart, etc)
 
I'm very near-sighted (20x800 vision with astigmatism) but wear contacts. I use a very bright light and get down within 9-12 inches and see just fine...
 
I use a cheap pair of off the shelf reading glasses from time to time on real small stuff.
Think you can find them up to like 4x for under $10. (Walmart, etc)

I will try to pick some of these up tomorrow. I think the problem that I'm having with the 3x lamp is that it is just in the way. I'd like to be able to get closer to see what I'm doing. If I had 4x and I could get close. . then I might be doing okay.

(On second thought, it might be all in my brain that I need to get close since it seems like the 3X magnifier makes objects appear to be the same size no matter how far they are from the lense.)
 
I ended up picking up an Optivisor. Very very nice! I got it with the 4" focal length lense and the 8" focal length lense. I haven't tried the 8" yet, but I think that's probably going to be the sweet spot of magnification and focal length for soldering. I got the addon monocular 3.6x additional magnification loupe, which has worked really well for reading fuses, etc. I also go the addon light which at first doesn't seem very bright, but it's pretty much pointing exactly at what you are working on, so it works pretty well.
 
Back
Top Bottom