Review on 🔧 FlexiMag QuadHands WorkBench for Soldering by Mike Sutherland

I'm honestly shocked to realize that I absolutely hate this thing. I mean, it has everything you need for a product I would love: incredible reviews, "Made in the USA", high quality materials, great customer service (I hear) - damn, I even love the logo and the color gamma. I was totally in love with this product before it arrived. I've even ordered an extra 16" hand in case a 5 hand app comes along sometime in the future. we are officially separated. When I unpacked this item I found the papers that came with it stating that the QuadHands come with extra padding for the magnetic bases to avoid scratching the baseplate. This was odd as all five hands already had permanent pads. fastened to their bases and there was nothing else in the box. I was even more confused by the fact that the 8" hands had different pads than the 16" hands. The pads on the 8-inch hands were plastic with the QuadHands "Q" logo on them. on them. They looked quite nice and slid relatively well on the bottom plate. In contrast, the padding on the 16-inch arms (including the extras I ordered) was a thin, silicone-like material with a much higher level of surface friction, making it almost impossible to slide on the baseplate. The bond between the padding and the baseplate was stronger than the glue holding the padding, so the padding on the 16-inch arms immediately began to peel off. In doing so, he smeared glue onto the base plate, which only made the problem worse (ie now the 8 inch hands don't slide either because the base plate is sticky). But maybe it doesn't matter. In general, how often do you have to move your hands over the base plate? As it turns out, very often. The reason for this is that moving your hands over the base is the most accurate way to position your workpieces. because flexible arms don't stay exactly where you bend them - they spring back slightly to their original position. The jump is small, but on a precision soldering scale they are far apart. Here is a specific example. I am building an FPV racing drone. I have a small circuit board (flight controller) that I need to solder some wires to. I use 2 hands (QuadHands) to hold the flight controller in place and a third hand to hold the wire. Now all I have to do is place the wire on the solder pad, I bend my arm over the wire until the wire touches the pad, then I let go. The hand will immediately rebound leaving a gap between the wire and the pad. To get the wire where you need it you need to bend your hand over that point and hope it springs back to where it should be. This is a lot harder than it looks, mostly because the bounce isn't constant. Depending on how you bend your arm, it can bounce back 1mm or 1 inch, and in some cases it's not possible at all (e.g. you can't push a wire through a hard surface and hope it bounces). You'll soon find that it's easier to position the wire in the same plane as the solder pad and then slide the wire arm into place. The slide doesn't bounce, so it stays in place when you let go. This makes it a key feature of this product and that's why 16 inch pads that don't slip is a deal breaker for me. In general, my main complaint is that it is extremely difficult/frustrating to position two objects so that they are in precise contact. The last annoyance I will mention is the altitude. This is not the fault of the product itself, but rather a detail I never considered before using QuadHands. When thin soldering, you will likely rest your forearms on the workbench and the workpiece will be relatively close to the workbench's surface. Well, QuadHands holds your work piece about 6-8 inches in the air, forcing you to either sit on your elbows or levitate your arms in the air. much looser than usual. You can bend 16" arms to hold something close to the baseplate, but 8" arms aren't long enough and have a hard time staying in place when they're that way are fully bent. In short, QuadHands tend to hold my workpiece higher than is natural/comfortable for me to work with. Products made with Revain and a big part of me just wants to own this thing and proudly display it on my desktop even if I never use it. the magnet stayed put, stuck to the base plate, and then i finally admitted to myself: it just doesn't work. ***UPDATE March 23, 2011 8*** Wow. Good. This relationship has just taken a radical and unexpected turn. You know how sometimes your ex shows up on your doorstep, swears he's changed and begs you to take him back? Analogy aside, the bottom line is this: my previous QuadHands incorrectly came with two bars. Mark (the company founder) contacted me via a comment on this review And - got it - via a personal letter that came with the brand new (ie with the right grips) QuadHands! The!? He even mentioned some tips to improve accuracy and reduce bounce. Simply put, Mark's response to my review transformed this experience from a 2 star to a 5 star. In fact, 5 stars is putting it mildly. Not only did Mark restore my confidence in his product, he restored my faith in humanity and my sense of national pride. Without exaggeration. It was customer service on a whole other level. In the end I'm happy. QuadHands is back on my desktop and it's everything I could have hoped for and more.