Smart Tweezers

Prototypes of Smart Tweezers have been designed back in early 2000s. One of the latest pre-production demo units had a hand-carved housing and hand-made tweezer-type probes. The design was using Atmel AT90S4433 8-bit Microcontroller with 4K bytes of In-System programmable flash memory. This is a high-performance and low-power AVR 8-bit RISC Archite... cture processor. The unit was powered by AA alcaline battery It is obvious that in the course of the design evolution the components also evolved quickly so that in about 2003 Smart Tweezers finaly were looking somewhat close to what it is today. The latest pre-production units have been nanufactured using 3D printing. In 2009 an Inductive Charging Kit, the STIC, (Smart Tweezers with Inductive Charger) was introduced in order to address a problem of housing damage due to multiple replacement of batteries. When the button batteries were discharged, the device needed to be opened; this caused the plastic to wear and not close as tightly; the screws could also be damaged. This model was more expensive but was widely accepted on assembly lines. Instead of replaceable batteries, users could replace them with a NiMH cell with inductive charger. When the device was placed on the cradle, a light would show that the device was charging. This upgrade was simple to do and extended the life of the ST-2 and ST-3 devices. In 2011 the latest model ST-5 had been released featuring even better basic accuracy of 0.2% for R and 0.5% for LC. The higher accuracy was available due to a change from a 2-wire Kelvin connection from the tweezers to a 4-wire connection. The ST-5 was Li-Ion rechargeable batteries and micro-USB charging. This model offered users replaceable, Swiss-made precision tips, and a 4-way joystick-like navigation. Features included offset subtraction and component sorting. This model came with a hard-shelled carrying case, charging cable, and was calibrated to NIST standards with traceable calibration certificate. Smart Tweezers ST-5 Measuring Capcitance, Top View Smart ...Read More