Magnifiers on spectacles

Inspection work and assembly/repair work are two very different applications. Navigating a hot soldering iron puts much more emphasis on both depth and breadth of field, but requires less magnification. For assembly this typically balances out at 5-10x.

For really desperate SMD repair jobs (where the full value of some expensive piece of kit is hanging in the balance) I use the stereo zoom microscope. When soldering it is backed right down to 7x, and lit from a raking angle to create as much 3D effect as possible. When the iron is safely back in the stand, the magnification can be cranked up to 20x to check for gaps and solder bridges.

Other kinds of inspection may need much higher magnification, of course.

BTDT, already 4 in the workshop and none left over :-)

Tried some similar ones before settling on the IKEA. The single large LED is truly in a different league.

Think so... the metal lamp housing is a heat sink for the LED, but it only runs warm.

It focusses back to infinity but has a fairly narrow angular view, about 18 degrees; when zoomed out the "long" frame width is about three times the working distance. When focussed in the plane of focus is more or less at the bottom of the clear section, which is 20 mm deep. There are four white LEDs but you can switch them off and use external angled illumination. It comes with a removable but transparent "lens cap" that doesn't cause much distortion in the centre of the field (although there is some flare around the periphery from the LEDs if they are on,) so it is quite a flexible little beast. The only slight glitch at the moment is that on one machine it seems to insist on reinstalling the drivers each time, but I expect it's something I have done. Also, there's a nice smooth and sensitive (manual) focus on it. All I need now is an excuse to use it on something (like so many of my tools and gadgets!)

In message , "dennis@home" writes

"Dennis finds his dick" shock horror

By "inspection" here I really mean mechanical stuff or '60s electricals, rather than modern electronics, so the scale and need for depth is more like your soldering example. Electronics stopped being fun when everything went SMT, I haven't really done any in years.

(Although the Arduino seems to have re-engaged a bit of my interest.)

It isn't a US Company but a Hong Kong one. In my experience over ten years they have proven to be very reliable and supply goods of good quality.

They are more expensive and my one experience with them was that they were unreliable and supplied goods of poor quality. Their "customer service" wasn't. I see no reason why I should give them a second chance.

Does it matter if the prescription corrects for a lot of astigmatism?

AJH