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Can anyone tell me what this might be used for? I found it in a box with some other electrical things, but I don't recall when I got it. It might have come with another tool like a soldering iron.

It's definitely injection molded, and appears to be glass filled nylon as far as I can tell. There are no markings on it.

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3 Answers 3

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It is a soldering aid tool.

Used for holding components down while soldering.

The slot is for manipulating wires.

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    That part looks like the deleted post from A.I.Bevelri. we usually call them swizzle sticks. Since it looks to be all plastic could it handle the heat from a soldering iron? I believe peek plastic can handle high heat but my soldering tools have metal tips.
    – Ed Beal
    Oct 28, 2018 at 10:37
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Very late answer: it's a "pot twiddler" for adjusting trimmer potentiometers (variable resistors) and capacitors. It's plastic so as to be non-conductive and fairly low capacitance, "wire holders" etc. are usually aluminium to withstand heat but not be solderable.

Some of the "high end" ones, e.g. made by Bourns, have a small piece of brass shim as the screwdriver tip to make it last longer... I've got one somewhere which must be 30+ years old. There are comparable tools for getting inside inductors, but these are much less important than they used to be in the days of superhet radios.

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  • No. Absolutely not. Adjustable potentiometers and capacitors have a recessed slot that can accept a small flat screwdriver. This will not fit them.
    – nobody
    Dec 14, 2022 at 2:19
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Actually, while a pot twiddler looks a lot like this, this is actually called a spudger and is used for manipulating very fine wires in cross connect panels in the old days of telephone cross connects. Those things used to be worth their weight in gold, and I still have three or four of them that I used when I was working in the industry.

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