Six tools that earned their place

2026-04-11 · Bench, small, badly lit

Not a shopping list — an order of purchase. If I were starting over with a limited budget, this is the sequence that would have saved me the most time.

1. A temperature-controlled iron that heats in seconds

The single biggest change. Not because of the temperature control, but because an iron that is ready instantly gets used for the two-minute job instead of being avoided.

2. ESR meter

Twenty euros. Finds bad electrolytics in circuit in seconds, which is most of what walks through the door on old gear. Pays for itself the first evening.

3. Bench supply with current limit

The current limit is the point. Power up an unknown board at 100 mA and a short announces itself instead of releasing smoke.

4. A microscope, cheap is fine

I resisted for years and was wrong. Half of "intermittent fault" turns out to be visible at 20x: a hairline crack, a bridged pad, a lifted pin.

5. Flux, more than you think

Everything difficult becomes easy with flux, and I under-used it for the first five years because it seemed like a consumable to be careful with. It is not.

6. A parts drawer with labels

Boring and decisive. The repair that stalls because you cannot find a 220 uF 25 V cap you know you own is the repair that sits on the bench for three weeks.