Well we just finished our project for the ultimate helping hands, just exactly what is the Ultimate Helping Hand Station? well it's a soldering station that pretty much does everything. Hold your iron, cleans it, tins it, holds ur project, illuminates your working area, etc etc etc. Take a look at our video to see what were talking about I hope you enjoy this and leave us some feedback.

HM-Innovations

Step 1: Gathering the Parts

You're going to need the following supplies for your helping hands.

4 pieces of 6" 12 gauge copper wire segments
4 alligator clips, make sure they are not to strong or to weak, after all they will be your helpers.
1 piece of metal sheeting (you pick your preferred size, ours came out of a project box lid we didn't use)
a 5mm 3.6v LED
a 210 ohm resistor
a 3/4 of an inch pience of plywood the same size as your metal sheet.
a 9v battery
a 9v battery connection
1 Switch
Tinner and Cleaner for your soldering tip
1" x 3/4" pience of PVC pipe.
1 Metal cleaner to scrape extra solder from your gun
1 Altoid Can
1 Lighter Cap

and

a LOT of aluminum Tape.

Step 2: Getting the Hands Ready

Using a soldering gun attach a 6" piece of 12 gauge copper wire to your alligator clamps, this will prevent them fromfalling off later on during the heavy movement.

After you have that soldered youre going to need to place electrical tape around the soldered joint in order to add extra protection and also it makes it look better.

when you have odne those two steps you need to fold the tip inwards onto any direction you want, and then fold the 12 gauge wire 3" from the top.

SEE ILLUSTRATION FOR THIS PROCESS

Step 3: Placing the Hands Onto the Board

We are using the lid to an old project box we bought from radio shack, if you have seen our Coil Gun video we used a project box for that video. if you havent seen it click here

www.hm-innovations.com/Coil_Gun.php

The project box comes with two lids, a metal lid, and a plastic lid, so we used the metal lid since it had pre drilled holes already.

We then placed duck tape on the oposing end to keep our hands in place.

Step 4: Cutting Out the Base

we found a 3/4" piece of plywood laying around our project and using our DualSaw (tm) we were able to easily cut a rectangular section that matched the same size as our project box lid.

We then drilled a small hole in the center of our lid and into our board and using a screw we made sure that the base was held in place.

Step 5: Adding Extra Stuff

We bought a tip tinner and cleaner from radio shack for like 2 dollars and using 3m adhesive tape we stuck it on one side of our project box.

The next step was to grab an old piece of PVC we had left over from our Cryptex project and we wrapped that with alluminum tape to prevent it from being burned by the soldering gun. We left the sticky side of the tape facing upwards and we placed a copper sponge in the center to clean out our tip. (see 3rd picture of our illustration) then we placed that on the side of our base and we used alluminum tape to hold everything down.

We then used an old altoid can we had left around and we flattened the lid of teh altoid can using a hammer. We then wrapped that around the handle of a screw driver to turn it into a cone. and we placed it behind our soldering cleaner

Step 6: Making the LED Switch

we used a 220 ohm resistor, a switch, a 9v battery, and a 3.6v LED light to make a switch once we got everything working we went ahead and installed the 9v battery to the base of our helping hands, installed the switch , and installed an LED holder

We then soldered the LED to the 220 ohm resistor and soldered them to the LED holder.

The last step was take a lighter cap and place it on our LED to prevent us from getting flashed when we were soldering, the LED is very bright.

Step 7: Finished Product

we finally finished our project and tested it out, the results were amazing!

We hope you liked our instructable :)

HM-Innovations

Introduction: Ultimate Helping Hands/Station