Good board work needs the right tools — you can’t reflow a BGA or chase a short with a soldering iron and hope. Here’s the shape of the bench, without the full parts list.
What’s on it
- Optics — a stereo microscope for fine-pitch inspection and rework. Most of the job is seeing clearly before you touch anything.
- Heat — hot-air rework, temperature-controlled soldering, and a preheater so big ground planes don’t wick all the heat away from the joint.
- Measurement — bench multimeter and a programmable power supply, plus the diagnostic kit for finding shorts and reading what a board is actually doing.
- Programming — chip programmers and readers for firmware work and dumping EEPROMs.
Custom tooling
The bench also runs software I’m building for it. benchhud pulls the microscope feed, a thermal camera, and live instrument readings into one heads-up display — so a component’s heat bloom labels the component, and the meter reading sits right next to the work instead of across the desk.