Hi,
My eyes are getting really bad nowadays, so working with small parts, and, especially soldering is hard. I usually wear a Coast headlight, which helps a bit, but it’s still tough.
I’ve also tried various things, like loupes that attach to glasses, the hard plastic-type headband magnifiers, etc. The latter ones are really uncomfortable for me.
So anyway, I saw this on Fasttech, I got one of them a short while ago from Fasttech:
https://www.fasttech.com/products/1398900
I posted a review on Fasttech, but I have to say that it’s quite nice. It comes with a set of lenses that click into the light. Once the lenses are in, they can be flipped out of the way when they’re not needed, and there’re two places to attach the lenses, so you can increase the magnification by combining two lenses.
The thing that is nice is that each lens is a certain power, and as the power decreases, the focus distance increases. So, I oftentimes use the 1x or 1.5x “all the time” when I’m working on my lights, as it allows me to see what I’m doing more clearly, from a more “normal” distance, instead of having to be right up to the work pieces.
The 2 LED light kind of sucks… it’s very dim. I’ve been trying to figure out how to mod it to increase the brightness, but haven’t gotten around to that yet. In the meantime, what I’m doing is using this headband with the magnifier lenses in combination with my Coast headlamp. This arrangement probably looks kind of odd, but it works pretty well :)!
Anyway, I thought I’d mention this in case it helps anyone else out there…
Later,
Jim