I very recently became paralyzed in my left (and dominant) arm, fingers and foot, which believe it or not, was not planned for.
The timing was pretty bad, as I’ve just purchased a couple of ESP3266-boards, a soldering kit and two pressure mats with the the end goal of making a basic bad sensor (one mat for my girlfriend and my side). (Here’s the guide I intend to follow: Make your own bed sensor)
The obvious issue is how one, as easily as possible, can accomplish this? Main issues right now are that I can’t hold the board, the wires or anything in my hand.
Any and all tips are greatly appreciated.
Well I hate to hear that, but I appreciate your optimism on it.
https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-One-Handed-Soldering-Tool-20-Effortless-So/
I’ve seen a sort of equivalent for welding with just a feed wire, maybe something like this could work. I’m guessing if not, some fancy clamps that can be held in many orientations would do it, something like this
I’ve had some success using a solder gun as above.
You load a spool on the back and it feeds it through to the tip when you pull the trigger. It’s one less thing to position in the helper grips others have suggested.
@machine2918@lemmy.world here are some links for that kind of thing:
I don’t have a good suggestion for holding the solder and iron in one hand, but if you search for “soldering helping hands” you’ll find a variety of tools for positioning the board you’re working on.
Am blind, can solder (badly). Afraid I can’t help but best of luck.
How the hell? I hope that’s not offensive. But that’s incredible.
Blind != No Sight. It’s possible they have low vision. They do mention an assistive magnifier in a comment on that post. Still more challenging than a fully-sighted individual, and would take a lot of practice. All too often though people assume blind means no sight at all.
This is correct.
Most blind people (> 90%) can point to the sun. In the US legally blind means glasses can’t correct your vision to 20/200 (which is really bad). Depending on exactly how that works with your eyes, for some close work like soldering would be no problem, while others it would.
Sort of like everyone thinks that because I’m colorblind I couldn’t pass a kindergarten color exam.
Never used it before but there is solder paste which uses a heat gun instead of an iron.
I second solder paste, and it can be used with a regular soldering iron in addition to with a hot air rework tool! Solder paste with very conservative use of a soldering iron is actually my favorite way to solder, mainly because (a) it gives you tons of flux on each joint, and (b) I have one fewer thing (the solder) that I need to hold steady.
With solder paste, the main thing is being careful with how much heat you apply and for how long. As I mentioned, solder paste contains a LOT of flux. That liquid/gel flux winds up with way more surface area in contact with the solder particles in the paste than the flux core of wire-type solder, so the heat distributes in it much quicker. And since so much flux is involved, I find that solder paste gives me better joints and even better coverage when tinning stranded wire than with wire solder!
Best wishes for your project! You got this!
