0001_Equipment
These are the tools and materials that I regularly use. I bought them all with my own money and make no claims that they're the best.
An overall excellent soldering station with a multitude of tip shapes available. It has enough oomph to solder large ground planes and keep up with some pretty fast paced soldering.
Makes desoldering a breeze and has a variety of tip sizes available. It does require frequent filter changes and needs to be clean for it to work well. This means a clean and filter change every 2-3 keyboards. It's on the heavy side so my wrist gets a bit sore after desoldering a larger board.
Well built heat gun with quick warmup and good temperature/airflow control. Comes with a ton of tip sizes and a hefty stand.
Great little flush cutters that let you get nice and close to a surface. They work great for trimming off rivets on a model M too. These are a bit on the consumable side as the tips are relatively easy to chip or dull. There's an osmosis system for these in my workshop. The newest nicest set is in one area, when it gets old it moves to another area and a new one takes its place.
I vastly prefer V-notch style wire strippers to any other style I've tried. I don't bother setting the size set screw and just go by feel. It's very easy to tell when you're through the insulation and hit the internal copper.
Very nice for this type of work. Great build quality and pretty much every bit you could need.
It makes a surprisingly strong jet of air that can blast dust or blow dry parts. Build quality is perfectly acceptable with a hefty plastic shell.
All of the sous-vide-retrobrigting here has been performed with this cooker. It can easily keep 25 gallons of water at 130F although it takes a bit to get there. I usually help it out with a towel around the container.
Does a good job cleaning keycaps and switches with some lightly soaped water. I blew up one when I used the heater function but it was replaced under warranty. I have yet to use the heater function on my current one and it's lasted a couple years just fine. Don't expect it to work miracles, use small batches of parts, and keep an eye on water temperature.
These make a great work surface and have held up pretty well over time. Be mindful of strong solvents or high temperature like soldering irons.
Excellent overall solder. The flux is strong enough for all but the dirtiest surfaces yet it doesn't produce foul smelling fumes or excessive smoke.
Nice and flexible, easy to strip, solders great. Available in a bunch of sizes. 20AWG is a good size for most stuff.
Defintely on the expensive side but it gets a very even finish. A single coat is all you need. Allegedly it's weldable and does some fancy galvanic stuff to prevent rusting.
I've messed around with other brands but this just works best for some reason.
Comes as a concentrate that I usually dilute to ~1:12. Cleans gunk really well. Runner up is standard Windex multipurpose cleaner.
This is an excellent non-polar solvent that's relatively plastic safe. It makes an oily mess and definitely needs to be washed off with soap after using. It works great at getting greasy gunk off boards, particularly degraded IBM foam.
Fast working, no smell. It's worked great on everything I've used it on. A couple hours is usually all anything needs. It does go bad after a while and loses its strength. I'd recommend buying multiple smaller bottles vs one large one and keeping them sealed until needed.
I buy it several gallons at a time. Works great for sous-vide-retrobright.
No particular brand. I buy it by the gallon and fill up a couple small bottles for around the shop. Be mindful of what you use it on as it will melt several plastics and paints.
No particular brand. I usually buy the bulk 100 packs for dirt cheap. Expect the cheap ones to not last nearly as long as the name brand ones. They work great for stubborn marks and grime but be careful. They're effectively sandpaper and will take the texture off a surface quite easily.