Probe your board without any hands

By Martin Rowe, senior technical editor, test & measurement, EE Times & EDN

Anyone who has had to make measurements on a board has run into the problem of needing extra hands. After all, if you need two hands to hold a pair of DMM probes, how can you use them to set up your meter? The same goes for times when you need to hold two oscilloscope probes. Unless you’re an octopus or have someone’s help, you’re in trouble.

Not anymore. The PCBite 2.0 will hold your probes and your board. Four holders attach to your board and keep it there because their magnets hold them to a stainless-steel plate. The holders adjust to the PCB thickness by using spring-mounted sleeves over its post. The sleeves hold your PCB to the underside of a flange at the top of the holder.

The original PCBite lets you hold a board while soldering, but you’d still need to hold your own probes for testing. Version 2.0 adds four probing arms; each can hold a probe board. Magnetic bases then hold the flexible arms to the base plate. To make sure the probe board’s tip stays in place, the probes are spring- loaded. Each probe board has two pins where you can connect leads to your test equipment.

The PCBite 2.0 holds your board under test, and its probes stay in place while connected to test equipment.

The PCBite 2.0 kit includes:

• 4× PCBite holders
• 1× large base plate, 21 × 29.7 cm (8.3 × 11.7 in.)
• 4× PCBite probes with pin-tipped test needles
• 4× extra crown-tipped test needles
• 1× set of yellow insulation washers
• 5× Dupont-to-Dupont test wires
• 2× Banana-to-Dupont test wires
• 1× microfiber cloth

While this PCBite 2.0 will work well at DC and low frequencies, it’s not clear from the product page how it works as frequency rises, for it surely adds impedance to your measurement setup.

The PCBite 2.0 is manufactured in Sweden by Sensepeek AB  and is available through Saelig Company for $123.