I’ve been meaning to build my own “helping hands”, or “third hand” setup for a while now, with LED lights, clips, and what-not, but still haven’t had the chance. In the meantime, I’ve been using Sparkfun’s bendable 3rd hand kit, and RCProPlus’s soldering station.
Hobby Creek recently came out with something similar – a new 4-arm helping hands kit. The Hobby Creek third hand kit features a machined aluminum base that has multiple threaded locations for repositioning any of the 4 arms, and 2 small pockets for keeping small parts from getting lost or fasteners from rolling away.
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I’m not sure how I feel about the company, as the Hobby Creek helping hands looks way too similar to Sparkfun’s product. Sparkfun gives a portion of each sale to the DIYer who inspired the product with this Instructable, but it is uncertain as to whether Hobby Creek has made a similar arrangement.
Hobby Creek was established in 2014 and we are launching our first product which is an improved Third Hand Kit. We were frustrated with the limitations of traditional Third Hand soldering tools and thought that some of the improved Third Hand Kits on the market lacked value and were of sub-par quality. Naturally we decided to create our own.
I like the design of Hobby Creek’s helping hands aluminum base, as it has those milled pockets for holding small parts. Arguably, compared to Sparkfun’s, Hobby Creek’s third hand kit looks to be the better product. Keep in mind that I have experience with Sparkfun’s product, but not Hobby Creek’s, and so I can’t tell how the two compare in person.
The Hobby Creek kit is more expensive than Sparkfun’s. Sparkfun’s is $30 (originally $35), and Hobby Creek’s is $45. Sparkfun’s comes with 2 arms, Hobby Creek’s comes with 4, but you can buy additional arms and alligator clips from Sparkfun for about $4 per complete pair.
Both products come with rubber feet and screw mounting holes.
If you ask me, it might have been better if Hobby Creek contracted with Loc-Line or another modular hose manufacturer to buy their hoses in a custom color. Not that I don’t like blue. Gray maybe? Black? Red? That would have helped to keep it from looking so similar to the Sparkfun helping hands kit.
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Hobby Creek’s bases are machined in the USA, but the origin of the hoses and accessory clips aren’t mentioned, and so they’re likely imported. They definitely don’t look to be Loc-Line hoses.
But, even if they’re not Loc-Line, Hobby Creek boasts about the high quality and quiet nature of the hoses they use.
Hobby Creek’s third hands kit definitely looks to have more and better functionality than Sparkfun’s. If I had to buy one flex-armed helping hands kit right now, and I didn’t care about the price, I’d go with the Hobby Creek third hand kit.
In addition to the added hose/arm positions and small parts pockets, the Hobby Creek base is bead blasted and anodized. It also looks like Hobby Creek put more attention and effort into their threaded holes. Sparkfun’s threaded holes aren’t bad, but would benefit from a chamfering step.
Price: $45
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Update: In case there is any confusion, this is not a “review,” it is a hands-off preview.
tim
How do these flexible hose type arm units hold things in place for like pin down solder joints and what not? Are they stiff enough to keep things in place?
Jon
These flexible coolant-hose type arms are plenty rigid for solder work. I hadn’t considered using them in this way, but I’ve used them in other capacities and I’m sure they work well.
Jerry
A couple days ago I got the Tekton version of a helping hands holder. It has double ball joints on the arms that hold the clamps, and they clamp anywhere along the length of a horizontal rod, and can rotate on the rod. It doesn’t seem to be able to have as much flexibility in how the clamps can be located, but I only gave $7 for it, and it included a little magnifying lens on it’s own little arm. The base is either iron or steel, but no little trays. Works well for holding wires for soldering or brazing small objects. I wanted an all metal one because I sometimes braze small objects and wonder if too much heat would be bad for the plastic flex lines used on these kind of holders.
Brian
I built my own using a broken tv stand base that was sitting around, used just the small metal piece. Then I bought some alligator clips and about 2 feet of 12 gauge copper wire for a couple bucks at HD. Cut and attached copper wire to plate, attacked alligator clips to the three ends of copper wire. I wad done in a few mins and less than $4 of parts.
JB
Hi Stuart,
Since you plan on making your own set one day, which is what I did initially with only spare parts in my workshop, I wanted to offer some suggestions for other tools to place on the Loc-Line (or knock offs) arms. I made arms using both sizes of some very inexpensive 3/4″ & 2″ HDX clamps (w/ protective vinyl tips) from the Home Depot. A decent 3″-6″ mirror was mandatory for my poor vision. A small fan is great to have when soldering, although a separate fan is easier to place. Any type of magnetic device that meets your needs is nice. And although an LED light on the end of an arm is always going to be beneficial, I personally find that a specialized headlamp works best for me as I can better direct the light with my line of sight. I personally prefer a Zebralight w/ diffused beam and high color rendering which helps me differntiate colors on tiny objects such as diodes. I look forward to what others will hopefully suggest. Anyway, I hope my comments prove helpful to you and your readership.
As for the
JB
Please post this as an addendum to my earlier comment. Thank you.
Since I inadvertently pressed the “post comment” button before I was finished, I wanted to add what I feel the Hobby Creek version needs to be improved upon. It looks to me in the photos that the depressions designed as part holders could really benefit from adding clear, snap-down covers. Otherwise, despite the rubber feet, it wouldn’t take much to have parts slip out and become lost.
One last comment Stuart, although I began reading your newsletter for over a year, this is my first post/comment. So I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for this valuable service you passionately provide. The weekly email notification alerting me of the latest newsletter is one of the very few I really look forward to reading each week. Well done!!!
JB
Michigan