News

Reader Question: What Do You Wish You Had on Your Bench?

April 20, 2018 by Kate Smith

If you could build your dream bench, what would you put on it?

If you could build your dream bench, what would you put on it? Share what's on your bench and what you'd add if you could.

From the most basic setup for building an electronics lab at home to the most advanced research lab, everyone's bench looks a little different. Most have basic tools on hand and some have the most cutting-edge equipment available. From soldering guns to multimeters, spec ans to waveform generators, solderless breadboards to basic components, everyone's needs are a little different.

If you could add any piece of equipment or hardware on your bench—or upgrade it—what would it be?

 

 

Tell us about your bench, in its present form and its ideal form, in the comments below.

 


Have a question you'd like to ask the community? Let us know in the comments.

24 Comments
  • Mark Hughes April 20, 2018

    If cost was no option, a bench top pick and place, reflow oven, and X-ray machine.  (I have a big workbench).

    Like. Reply
  • davegsc April 20, 2018

    I have a great soldering station, several fixed and variable power supplies, one decent and several cheap multimeters, a shop-built reflow oven, a fine selection of components.

    A really good, oscilloscope would take my bench to a whole new level. It wouldn’t have to be a full-color, top drawer unit but ideally, if it came with 2+ Channel, 8+ bits, 100+Mhz, I would be very appreciative and SO hap, hap, happy!

    Thank you!
    Dave Davies

    Like. Reply
  • Robin Mitchell April 20, 2018

    What would I wish for?

    Well that is a very good question and hard to answer! Firstly, as things stand, I can make all the projects that I need to without too many problems but having said that, I find my scopes lacking. They are all analogue types with the fastest one being 20MHz so a Digital Storage Oscilloscope would be wonderful. The scope itself would not even need to be that powerful since 100MHz would do just about everything I need it to do.

    Another piece of equipment that would be sweet would be a LAN Power supply that can both log power usage and supply it all over LAN! I remember using one at my last workplace and the machine was absolutely fab!

    With regards to soldering stations, what I have is plentiful and enough which is a cheap $20 iron. While BGA are obviously out of the question my iron is suitable enough for many SMD parts.

    If I had to choose ONE thing it would be the scope hands down mainly because I could build my own IoT power supply if I wanted to (in fact I made a simple version on Maker.Pro).

    Like. Reply