Does anyone have a cheap magnification apparatus they can recommend for soldering SMD components and thin wires to Lume Aux PCBs, etc.?
I’ve been doing it with just my glasses the past couple of years.
It’s been getting harder and harder for me to see them clearly as I get older.
I need something cheap yet effective.
Snagged this from “FLEA-BAY” a few days ago for working on watches. Decent. Haven’t loaded it up with batteries yet.
I got this from Harbor Freight many years ago and it helps a lot! I don’t use the built-in LEDs and instead use an LED lamp.
I’m 6’4" and have a large head.
Do you think this would expand large enough to fit someone with a large head?
I had a Harbor Freight helping hands and recently threw it out.
The magnifying glass was made of plastic and things looked distorted when I looked through it.
I too have a rather large noggin. I did just measure the device and at the largest setting it has an internal circumference of two (2’) feet. So long as your melon is a bit smaller than that at your brow line you’re good to hook.
I find a magnifying glass is better than loupes as they don’t need to be centimetres away from what you’re soldering to work. Of course a stereo microscope can also do that but that’s way out of your budget.
You can likely use a large maginfying glass and some helping hands or a gooseneck holder to hold it up.
I’ve got the jewellers visor and the helping hands with magnifier. I prefer the magnifier for soldering and the visor for other stuff like when I’m machining small parts.
If you’re not using it often a possible diy solution… use your phone…? Just beware the screen will sleep fairly quickly
Lately, I’ve been taking pictures with my phone and zooming in to see my work.
I should look for an adjustable phone holder and give that a whirl.
It’s a pity you threw out the helping hands, could’ve used that to hold your phone.
Pictures tend to be clearer than a continuous video feed so you may not be impressed with this idea
It wouldn’t have been strong enough to support my phone stably.
There’s a spec of dirt on ya finga mate… and where’s the resistor you mentioned…?
Don’t sneeze (on your left hand!) 
The magnifying “plastic” also scratches easily, but I haven’t noticed any distortion with mine.
At some point I may just spend the money and get a bigger, real glass magnifying glass for my workbench. I see you can get a nice one for around $40 on Amazon. Is that cheap enough?
Or maybe I/you can get lucky and find a used one.
I have several types of magnifiers from Carson Optical.
Since I prefer a frameless magnifier for benchtop soldering, Carson’s GN-88 is my current favorite model.
I paid the equivalent of $10 at a car boot sale once for a cheap chinese electric microscope, just to mess around with it. have to admit its impressive for the price. Never tried soldering with it as my eyesight is adequate for the occasional bit of soldering I do. There are different versions available ranging from 200x magnification to 1600x. choose whatever you feel is appropriate. Dont let the high-sounding numbers put you off, the focus wheel and zoom are combined and mine focuses at two different places. you could try moving it closer or further from your work. Its digital and needs a PC to work. Ignore their crappy drivers, if you have a windows PC just plug it in and open the camera app and treat it as a webcam. Took a few screenshots demonstrating various magnification levels (mine is ‘‘1000x’’ zoom) on a crappy fake chinese XML t6 copy (5050 on 20mm mcpcb) for example photos.
That looks a lot better than I would have thought.
I use one similar to these
My eyes got worse with age, don’t need glasses but poor light and small stuff became a problem.
I researched many options, including “medical” loupes, microscopes but these are expensive options. I figured for little more than $10 I will try these and so far they do the job.
I mostly use 2.5x lens. Disadvantage is that you need to keep your head closer to what you are looking at than normal but for me it is not so bad.
I use them for lot of stuff now, wherever I need to see well something small 
Eerily enough, this just came in.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJSG2DHD
With a glass lens, not plastic. 2 CT, “stepless” dimming, 18fitty.
Go crazy…
