A Pair of Cheap Tweezers with Ceramic Tips

Back in the spring, I bought a pair of tweezers on sale (three items for next to nothing), tried them out, and ended up tossing them in my desk drawer. Now I’ve finally found a little time to tell you what they’re like, why I don’t use them, and how they compare with my main pair of tweezers, which I bought quite a while ago.

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First, a few words about the tweezers. This review isn’t just for electronics hobbyists, since tweezers are used for all sorts of tasks, but the selection criteria are pretty much the same. Second, I originally bought my first pair like this on Taobao quite a while ago. I’ve only used them regularly for a couple of years, but honestly, I really like them. Then I spotted a set of similar-looking ones during a sale and decided to buy them as spares. Well, when they arrived, I understood why they were cheaper....

A brief digression. I often see people asking what these tweezers are for, why the tips are so thick, and whether the tips are ceramic or “ceramic.” Well, these are genuinely handy tweezers, with several advantages over ordinary ones:
1. They don’t conduct electricity. If you’re working with electronics, especially equipment that may be live, this is critically important.
2. They have much lower thermal conductivity, which gives you two advantages right away. First, the tweezers themselves heat up less. Second, I sometimes use them to hold down a component while soldering, or to grip a wire, and less heat gets transferred to the tweezers, making the job easier.
3. They handle high temperatures without any trouble. I’ve used them with a hot-air gun and sometimes had to heat things until they were practically “golden brown,” but the tweezers were completely unfazed. They also don’t heat up your hand, so that’s a win.
4. They hold their shape perfectly. Physically, they can’t bend—up to a point, anyway. After that, it’s time to get a new pair.
5. They’re non-magnetic.

The downsides:
1. It’s harder to make fine tips, but more on that later.
2. They’re relatively fragile.
3. They don’t conduct electricity. Yes, that can be a drawback too—for example, when you need to quickly short a couple of contacts on a circuit board.



At first glance, these look just like my work tweezers. They’re sold as a pair, one plain and one painted. The paint job is actually quite good (it looks like powder coating), though I don’t know how well it’ll hold up. They look fine, at least. Both pairs came with protective caps for the tips, but that’s all the packaging included. The pair I bought earlier came in a blister pack.


They’re about 130 mm long, roughly the same as my old pair.


Here they are next to my old pair (on the left). They still look very similar. The only difference so far is that my old pair cost $1.50 on Taobao, plus shipping, while these two cost $2 including shipping.


But as they say, the devil is in the details.
Let’s start with the joint where the two halves meet. You can clearly see that on the old pair (in the middle), the joint is not only neatly and evenly welded, but also ground down so well that it looks like one piece.


But the edges were more disappointing. On the old pair (on the left), they’re rounded and neatly ground down, while on the new ones they’re simply cut, leaving sharp edges.
Yes, the new tweezers are a little wider, though that’s a matter of preference. But when you pick up the new pair, especially after using the old ones for a couple of years, you understand why the old pair cost more. You can barely feel them in your hand, while these... well, it’s hard to put into words....



The metal on the old tweezers (on the left) is also a little thicker: 1.6 mm versus 1.1–1.2 mm. But because the edges are rounded, you don’t notice it.


The tips are made the same way, so no complaints there. If needed, you can adjust them slightly to make sure they meet evenly.


Speaking of the tips.
1. In my opinion, the tips on the new pair (on the right) are a little finer. That’s neither good nor bad; it’s more a matter of what you use them for. I’ll probably find them more convenient, since the old ones couldn’t get into every space.
2. People often write that the tips aren't ceramic but Teflon. I won't claim either way, but if they are Teflon, why do the ends of the tips have something that looks like sprue marks?

In any case, subjectively, the tips feel the same on the old and the new tweezers.


I wrote above that it's easier to make thin tips out of metal, and that's true, I completely agree. But even with my old tweezers, I can work with 0402 components without much trouble. Those are the tiny ones between the 2512 parts (at the top) and the 1206 parts (at the very bottom).


For this kind of work, I actually bought some kind of “precision” tweezers. They seemed pretty good, costing around $3, non-magnetic, acid-resistant, with fine tips.
But I think you can guess that if they're still sitting in their original packaging, I probably don't use them. And you'd be right: I tried them, then went back to the ceramic ones, even though their tips are much thicker.


The new tweezers open about 20 mm, compared with 15 mm for the old ones. In my opinion, the old ones are the clear winner here, though again, it's a matter of habit.


And this is an objective difference that I noticed as soon as I picked them up. They require different amounts of force to squeeze, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is that one of the pairs is very stiff.
First, I compared them “face to face”: I put one against the other and squeezed. You can see that the black pair is almost identical to my old ones, while the unpainted pair is clearly stiffer: my old ones were almost closed, while the new ones hadn't even closed halfway. That's quite inconvenient.

Then I thought I could measure the squeezing force. I took some scales, placed the tweezers on them, zeroed the reading, then squeezed them against the scale platform until they were almost fully closed. The results (force shown in grams) were:
1. Old pair (weight 21.28 g) - 275 grams
2. New black pair (20.54 g) - 296 grams
3. New unpainted pair (20.49 g) - 562 grams

For comparison, my old ordinary tweezers from the USSR weigh 22 grams and require 390 grams of force to squeeze.



Someone might say, “So what? Is it really that hard to squeeze tweezers?” No, of course not—once, twice, ten times. But when you need to position a component precisely while applying a lot of force, you don't just get tired; the constant strain, both while holding them and just while working, makes the job much harder and reduces accuracy.
Of course, tweezers that are too soft can also be inconvenient: you lose the tactile feel of holding something, and the tweezers feel “floppy.” So there's an ideal range, and in my opinion, 200–300 grams is about right.

And yes, now imagine having to squeeze tweezers with nearly 600 grams of force while installing at least 200–400 components in a row: pick one up, position it, tack it with solder, and repeat several hundred times. Believe me, you'll definitely notice the difference.


So, here's what we've got.
The black tweezers are very similar to my main pair, both in tip size and in squeezing force. The metal is just as rough-cut as on the unpainted pair, but the paint makes them relatively comfortable to hold. The old ones are certainly nicer to hold, but the new painted ones are also reasonably comfortable.
I didn't like the unpainted pair at all. They dig into my hand and are very stiff, so I doubt I'll use them—unless I need them as a donor for the tips.

That's all for today. I'd be very happy to hear in the comments what you use for this kind of work. Links would be even better.