Jonathan Gleich has developed a bit of a hand tremor, which makes soldering quite difficult. If you’ve ever tried soldering anything more complex than a through hole resistor, you’ll know that even a the normal shakiness of a hand can really be a road block to getting things done.
Jonathan, being the industrious maker that he is, set out to find a way to relieve his frustrations by making an assistive device. He settled on a camera stabilizing gimbal as his method of smoothing out that motion.
I thought the way he made it removable, so the whole gimbal wasn’t permanently attached to the iron, was quite clever.
If he’s very careful, Jonathan can now solder without the iron bouncing all over, which is a big win. This isn’t perfect, as you can see in the video above it is a bit awkward, but the cost is substantially less than a purpose built assistive device, and Jonathan is the type of person to continue improving it.
To see more of Jonathan’s hacking, check out his instructables account, there’s a lot there!
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