PCB holder / testing fixture

grabcad

A "3rd-hand" style PCB and testprobes holder for testing, debugging electronics.This setup has shown quite useful to steadily hold oscilloscope and extra probes to PCBs during development, freeing both hands for more interesting tasks than just holding a probe. Some details of the construction:* The metal articulated-arm was taken from a cheap dial-gauge. The base was unscrewed and the M5 bolt is attached to the aluminum profile using an M5 T-nut. This arm is quite nice to use, since allows you to hold the scope probe in different angles and keep it steady, even when the ground-spring is attached to the tip for low-noise or high-speed measurements...* The aluminum profile is a 20x20mm from openbuilds, cut to approx. 20cm. * For holding the PCB, one side is held in place with an M3 bolt, while the other is free to move across the rail, spring-loaded by a ~50mm long spring which fits inside the profile and is held by another T-nut.* The 3D printed 2nd arm uses also M3 bolts to hold the base and the arm, while the hexagonal knobs make easy the adjustment by hand.* At the end of the arm, there is a 20mm long 1.35mm diameter spring-loaded "pogo-pin", which is soldered at the top side to a flexible silicone wire. The sharp tip and the spring of the pogo-pin makes easy to hold enough pressure of this arm into a PCB testpoint or on top of an SMD pad.The design can be extended of course if more probes are needed, by adding 1 more profile in L-shape (this somehow keeps the PCB size flexibility). 2 or 3 more profiles will allow adding more arms/probes, but will somehow limit the flexibility of using different board sizes.