If your work involves handling extremely intricate, small, and delicate components, it pays to invest in a good set of precision tweezers.
Designed to help you in the assembly, servicing, or repair of tasks where a high level of precision is needed, high precision tweezers, are an essential tool in a wide range of industries.
Here, we explain how different types of tweezers, such as ESD tweezers and anti-magnetic tweezers, work and guide you on how to select the right tweezer for each application.
What are Precision Tweezers?
Precision tweezers are a type of handheld tool designed to make intricate assembly or disassembly work easier. They look very similar to domestic tweezers you may have at home, but there is a lot more to precision tweezers than first meets the eye.
While it’s true that precision tweezers share the same characteristic V-shape and two-armed structure as their domestic cousin, this type of tweezer is no substitute for a professional set of high precision tweezers.
Precision tweezers have been purpose-designed for a range of professional applications, and come in a much wider variety of styles to help you work safely and comfortably while undertaking intricate, and sometimes dangerous, tasks.
Where are Precision Tweezers Used?
You may not be too familiar with precision tweezers as a tool, at least not when compared to more familiar hand tools like hammers, screwdrivers, and wrenches. You’re unlikely to find many domestic tool kits that come with a set of precision tweezers as standard, and yet different types of tweezers are relied on each day, in a diverse range of industries.
Some of the main industries and applications that require high precision tweezers include:
- Watchmaking
- PCB repair
- Electronics and microelectronics
- Manufacturing of semiconductors
- Microwave device assembly
- Circuit die and electronic package assembly
- Aerospace
- Military
- Biotech
- Biology
- Laboratory applications
Different Types of Tweezers
We’ve already mentioned that high precision tweezers, much like many other types of hand tools, come in a few varieties – each designed to help you achieve different tasks.
Some of the different types of tweezers you’ll come across have been manufactured for use in a particular industry, or with just one specific application in mind. Others can be used for multiple tasks interchangeably, and offer you a little more flexibility.
The key with precision tweezers, as with all professional tools, is to choose the right kind of tweezer for the job you need to do. This is especially important with tweezer work, as failure to use the correct tweezer can result in a spark or explosion, irreparably damaging the circuit or component you’re working on.
To help you work safely with high precision tweezers, we’ve outlined each of the main tweezer types below, and given a brief summary of the different applications each is suitable for.
1. Bent Tweezers
With their elongated hooked nose, bent tweezers give you a greater degree of control and accuracy – perfect for those fiddly micro tasks where you’re working with restricted space.
They’re more comfortable to use than other types of precision tweezer, helping to reduce operator fatigue and making it easier to work without stopping for longer periods.
2. Flat Tip Tweezers
Flat tweezers have a distinctive straight edge instead of a tapered tip. They also offer you a larger surface area than other types of precision tweezer. This combination makes flat tweezers well suited to picking up ‘larger’ objects.
3. Round Tip Tweezers
Round tweezers have a gently curved tip. They’re a good general-purpose tweezer to have in your tool kit, but they’re not suited to tasks that require high levels of accuracy.
4. Wafer Tweezers
Wafter tweezers have a series of flat teeth on their face.
They’re used in the manufacture of semiconductors, allowing the user to safely handle the silicon wafers, without the risk of damaging them.
5. Cutting Tweezers
Cutting tweezers, as the name implies, are used for cutting. They have a sharp edge on each side, which curves inwards, allowing you to make clean incisions in small components, such as soft wires.
6. Blunt Tweezers
If you’re worried about a component getting damaged blunt tweezers are a great choice of precision tweezer to work with.
They feature a tapered point which, rather than being sharp, is dull at the end, offering you a high degree of accuracy without the risk of damaging materials.
7. Pointed Tweezers
Pointed tweezers are most recognisable by their sharp tapered point.
They’re the perfect tweezer type to help you penetrate incredibly tight or difficult to access places, but their sharp nose means you have to be careful not to use too heavy a hand or you risk damaging components.
What are ESD-Safe Tweezers?
ESD-safe tweezers are tweezers designed to be used with microelectronics and the manufacture of electronic devices, such as watches, smartphones, and medical equipment.
ESD stands for Electrostatic Discharge. In layman’s terms, ESD is a sudden flow of electricity that occurs when two differently charged objects come into contact. The easiest way to imagine ESD is to think of lightening. This is an example of naturally occurring ESD where the lightning is the consequence of electrical charges releasing.
If not appropriately handled and managed, ESD can cause micro explosions that can short circuit or even blow up electrical equipment. Like lightning, it can also be dangerous if it comes into contact with the human body, which can generate static electricity simply by walking on a vinyl floor.
ESD tweezers are made of specialist materials that work to safely transfer the build-up of charged electricity, preventing it from sparking, exploding, or causing a harmful electric shock. ESD-safe precision tweezers, therefore, are vital for anyone working in the manufacture, repair, servicing, or assembly of electronic components.
What are Anti-Magnetic Tweezers?
Anti-magnetic tweezers are another important sub-category of high-precision tweezers. They’re manufactured from non-magnetic materials, in other words, materials that cannot conduct or pass on a magnetic charge.
Opting for precision tweezers that aren’t anti-magnetic means that, over time, your tweezers will inevitably become magnetised. This occurs for a number of reasons, ranging from passing the tweezers over a magnetic field to exposure to other magnetised components.
Anti-magnetic tweezers are usually composed of an anti-magnetic alloy, which does make them a more expensive tweezer type to invest in than standard precision tweezers. However, non-magnetic tweezers ensure that no magnetism is conducted or passed on while you are working with the tweezers, which is essential in industries such as electronics.
Popular Precision Tweezers
Keen to add a set of precision tweezers to your tool kit? If your work regularly brings you into contact with electronic components or you’re forever working on micro tasks that require extreme precision and a steady hand, a sturdy set of professional tweezers is a must-have.
Shop our most popular precision tweezer ranges, including ESD safe tweezers, micro tweezers, electronics tweezers, SMD tweezers, and stainless steel tweezers, or take a look at our tweezers homepage for a full breakdown of all high precision tweezer styles we stock.
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