I’d heard that PC board vises were the cat’s meow for stuffing and soldering boards, and I’ve seen them used in a couple of “how to solder” videos. So when my friend Cort was putting together a big parts order recently, I had him add on a vise for me. Here it is.
It came in pieces: the base, the spindle, the bar, the clamps, and all the knobs. Pretty easy to put together, but I had one little problem:
The jaws didn’t line up. Like, so bad there’s no way I could make a decent PCB stay put.
The square holes to fit over the bar had casting flash left in them; and the bar itself is rhomboid instead of square, so it doesn’t fit snugly into the jaws’ (allegedly-)square corners. It was even possible to wiggle the jaws and make them misalign in the other direction, but not to get them to stay aligned.
So earlier this weekend, I sat down with a square file and got all the flash out. I also found which way the clamps fit best on the bar and reoriented them to that position. Now they’re stable and pretty well aligned.
I got to use it for soldering some of the last components of my stepper control board. The vise’s spindle has a joint that folds 90° forward or back, so I assembled it to have the jaws pointing straight up when the spindle is straight. I fold it forward to do top-side work, and then fold it back up and over backward to do bottom-side working. Verra nice!