A jig for delicate parts — savings that pay back from the first piece
A 3D-printed jig that protects the fragile membrane of a pressure sensor while wires are soldered on the production line.
A few hours of design, a few minutes of print time, and a tiny per-piece cost — in exchange for protecting a batch of pressure sensors whose membrane can be killed by one wrong nudge with a pair of tweezers.
The problem
A pressure sensor has a thin membrane on its front face. While soldering leads onto it, it’s easy to:
- accidentally press on the membrane,
- overheat the plastic housing,
- slide the part too close to the iron.
Each of those becomes scrap.
The solution
We designed a jig that:
- grips the sensor by its side walls, never touching the membrane,
- aligns the leads exactly where the solder needs to go,
- has cutouts for heat-shrink tubing, so the whole process — solder to insulate — happens without removing the part.
Material and production
3D-printed in FDM with PLA — the cheapest and fastest print technology. Because each unit costs cents, the operator was given dozens of them: no cleaning, no maintenance, and if one gets damaged you just grab another.
Because each jig is so cheap, it pays off even on a small batch — ROI shows up at 2-3 saved sensors.