@whitequark so is the idea that the act of magnifying your hands so large in your visual field somehow mediates the tremors?
I have pretty shaky hands and while piano/gaming/typing doesn’t suffers, soldering does and I’m curious about whatever you find!
@whitequark I think you can go a long way by providing a really solid place to rest your hand, fully take all the weight off it, so that only your fingers are doing the actuating. When I get small shakes from over-caffeination, if i'm not at the PnP i'll just stack up a few boxes next to the vice.
I remember from various youtubes that hand / tool support is a vital part of production welding too. Carefully re-arranging the work-piece and the welder feed-lines to offload the static lod
@whitequark Over time I found myself subconsciously extending a pinky to touch down on the vice to try and do a similar thing (took years to train myself NOT to drop my pinky right into freshly applied solderpaste...)
The pinky technique always helped a small amount, but the real deal is to fully take all that weight off.
@whitequark yeah, 100% vote for microscopes, it's absurd how they improve the feedback and control you have.
especially with good light.
the "cheap" 200$ ones are totally fine (although you can buy more comfort for more money)
@whitequark I wasn't aware of the Parkinson's thing, that's really cool!
I can certainly attest to my manual dexterity under a scope being better at higher zoom levels. there's a sweet spot between zoom and working distance, too. if I don't feel constrained by the Barlow lens being close to my hand (in more of a proprioception sense than a literal one) it makes it much easier to get my hand to relax.
@whitequark I pretty much gave up on learning electronics hardware because of fine motor disability, but I did try asking about this in an embedded engineering discord server and they suggested: getting someone else to do the soldering for you, using PCB vices and taping things down, and using a PNP machine. I found this list of "OpenPNP" projects https://openpnp.org/hardware/ that might be a little cheaper.
The gundam model hand stablizer seems really helpful but it might be more for lower frequency hand & arm oscillations, i wonder how much it'd help higher frequency finger osc
@whitequark
An elastic wrist brace (the kind used for sprained wrists) can help essential tremors by applying some pressure to the area, but that's all we've got.
I presume "technological" here means you're not looking for potential medical remedies?
@whitequark Fair. One of our partners has essential tremors (genetic) that are likely to worsen with age, so we've had a few conversations and looks around.
The first-line treatments seem to be beta blockers, but they all have their own side-effect profiles to worry about.
Apart from prescription medication, plain old ethanol, at low doses, seems to give quite good results according to some studies. This has worked well enough for our cases, as our partner's tremors are not severe enough to require treatment unless they're explicitly trying to paint models or do other fine work. Generally 5mL ethanol/80kg (so ~1 standard drink, ish) has been enough for our cases, but YMMV. And as always, ethanol itself has a plethora of side effects and potential harm it could cause, or may be excluded by other medication.
@whitequark @stereo4x4 I got my hands on one of these and it's really excellent:
https://www.pcbunlimited.com/products/mpp-21-manual-pick-place-system
I tend to assemble the first handful of a new project on the manual pick and place before placing a larger order.
@whitequark A good magnifying lamp setup helped me with my shaky hands more than I thought it would.
I think I'd like to get a good pick and place tool, as well, but can't speak from experience on that yet.
@whitequark I've become addicted to solder paste with stencils. getting the solder paste exactly where i need it means the part typically sticks to where i need it when putting it on, so my hands don't have to be super steady to place things properly
but if you already do that then i'm not sure. certainly cheaper than a PNP.
@karen I'm not sure about the specifics but you'd have to check if the PCBs you've ordered are reflowable
with a stencil to get the solder paste exactly where it needs to be, I just put the parts on the board (single-sided), put the boards in the oven, load the correct profile into the PID controller, and then let it run. it gets it right about 95% of the time.
I would recommend trying a binocular microscope, 10x or 20x if you can find one handy.
Anecdotal story here. I have a good friend with Parkinson's disease. We conducted an experiment, and I wish I had recorded it.
I had my friend with me as I was assembling a bunch of boards with SMD and through hole bits. I had him hold one of my super sharp probes and point to one of the SMD components. Quite obviously he was unable to keep his hand tremors under control and was shaking quite a bit.
He then looked at the component under microscopy. It was amazing, the amount of movement that the tremors were without the microscope, translated to what his eyes saw in the microscope. To me, I was not looking under the scope, it looked like his hand had stopped trembling. We both couldn't believe it and we still talk about it.
Can you post a picture of the setup you used? My partner has hand tremors and hasn't been able to paint in the last few years. This would be a huge thing for her if we can get it to work.
@whitequark
Painting under 10x or 20x magnification? That sounds really neat and I can only imagine at the results. I hope your partner finds something that works for them :)
Please bear in mind that this is ONE anecdotal story, from my experience, and I would expect results to vary depending on the reason for the tremors.
I don't have pictures, but I can list what microscope we use at the shop for inspection work.
(i am not a sponsor and have no affiliation with AmScope - I just use their equipment and it works for me.)
AmScope model SM-4NTP with 7X-45X magnification
Added a AmScope SM07 0.7X Barlow Lens for greater depth of field
LED ring light.
It looks like they're about double the price from when we purchased our set, but I also believe that the right tool for the job pays for itself.
I hope this helps, sorry I don't have any pic's of the setup.
@thinkcomputers @pericat ah yeah I've had an Amscope, metallurgical one. it was proper trash with a serious (irreparable) production defect, but it got me into silicon microphotography so whatever I guess
I hope their binoculars or inspection microscopes are better at least
Yes, AmScope aren't the best, but for the price they're amazing.
I can't afford the big names, Mantis, Olympus, and this one works for what our shop needs.
Thanks for the great question! looks like there's all sorts of ideas. I am enjoying the conversation that your question has sparked :)
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