BUDGET LAB RECOMMENDATIONS

It can be hard and a real expense to set up a workshop/electronics laboratory that gains real capability in manufacturing. Here are a few recommendations on what to get at different price points to get your lab up and running. Here is mainly a list of general lab equipment, more specialized equipment for niche applications are probably best investigates on a requirements basis.

ELECTRONICS

Soldering Iron

A soldering Iron is the first tool that any good electronics lab needs, it’s basically the screw driver of putting electronics together. You can only spend so long using breadboards before you need to use a part that has no DIP package or need to put something together that needs to be space constrained. Not only do I recommend getting a reasonably good iron to work as your main; I also recommend more than one Iron in total even if the additional ones are all of the cheapest variety.

For about $200AUD you can either get a good brand “old style” temperature controlled iron or a knock off of one of the “new style” irons. I highly recommend getting a “new style” iron, even if it is a knock off brand. The benefits of these irons are two fold; they have much better performance and you can change tips on them much more quickly and conveniently. Changing tips doesn’t sound like a big selling point, but trust me; as soon as you start working on circuits with big components alongside little ones you’ll change your tune. I have a genuine Weller WES51, but I would recommend grabbing something like the T12-11or Jabe models that you can get at a place like Union Repair or similar. I have a T12-11 on my desk and I’m quite happy with it; I use it as my main iron.

For the high rollers I’ve have very good experience with JBC irons. The basic station could set you back north of $600AUD but it runs circles around any “old style” iron I’ve used as well as the knock off versions of the iron. I believe that Hakko, Weller and Pace probably have similar offerings with similar quality and price points, but I can’t speak for their performance.

Finally in the cheap as chips section there are the sub $30AUD range which includes the YiHUA 936 among many contenders. It’s a bit of a race to the bottom on price and performance, but it’s good to have more than one iron, and if two of the higher performance ones is prohibitive, getting one or more of these types is a good fill in measure.

I highly recommend having at least two irons, rework can be tricky if you can apply heat to more than one point. I’d start with a T12-11, or similar, and add a second if you can or get one of the cheap throw-away irons as your second.

Portable Multimeter

Handheld meters are endlessly useful in practically any situation. Depending on your need for precision there are so many options. If you need high precision then you need to think about spending some money, but if it

Desktop Multimeter

Clamp Meter

Clamp meters are good if you’re doing anything high current that doesn’t need to be super precise or where you can’t splice in a sense resistor. Cheap ones are available from all the same places as regular multimeters.

Oscilloscope

Oscilloscopes are hard, the cheap consumer ones are often a few hundred dollars and if you’ve played with fully featured professional ones they still aren’t even close to the same experience. The USB scopes will still set you back at least $100AUD and are even less featured than the cheap consumer ones even before you think about the interface and technical issues they bring in. I haven’t had any experience with the cheap consumer ones, but having played with USB scopes and not having a few thousand to drop on a nice professional one I think the cheap consumer ones are the best bet for a budget lab.

The other cheap option to look out for are old Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes, sometimes you can find an old gem in working order, other times you can find one that’s only a little busted and attempt a repair. Only do that if you’re reasonably competent in electronics because you both need to think about the mains input (which can kill you) and the very high voltages of the screen (which can also kill you, even while off for quite some time). It’s not for the faint of heart, and you aren’t guaranteed a working oscilloscope at the end of it all either, so

Power Supplies

DC Electronic Loads

Static Protection

Hot Air Gun

Reflow Oven

Microscope/Optics

Reflow station

Third Hand

Ventilation

Small Tools

Consumables

WORKSHOP TOOLS

3D Printer

Drill