Solder Reel Holder - MKII (Unified Base)

thingiverse

Yet another solder reel holder! This one however, is what I normally use at work as an Electro-Mech assembler. What I found so frustrating was that just having a solder reel on its own meant pulling the wire vertically from the reel, resulting in a rather messy coil of solder wire which then had to be straightened before applying the solder to the joint - a lot of time wasted if you do the time & motion calcs on a lot of repetitive joints. Cue the holder, which both keeps the solder tidy (no messy coils), straight as its pulled from the holder through the hole in the tiara and thus always readily accessible from the same location to then feed into the joint. It also avoids the reel rolling off the tabe and onto the floor!. There is a cavity (63mmx10mm) in the base which can house a weight such as a metal disc or waste solder deposits with the spindle being glued into place and the cavity sealed closed, lowering the holder's centre of gravity to avoid being toppled over. Surrounding the spindle, there is a small ridge which helps reduce rotational friction so that small diameter solder is less likely to break off from the reel when pulled. If the internal diameter of a solder reel is a little on the small side for the 20mm spindle, the hole in the reel can be widened by rotating a pair of scissors or suitably tapered long-nosed pliers to ream the hole a little wider. To avoid being dragged, I've used 3x 20mmx2mm flat 'bumpons' etc. located on the points of an equalateral triangle around the underside edge of the body. When the soldering is done, any excess solder wire can simply be reeled back onto the reel by rotating it in reverse with the tip of a finger on the top of the reel.