Test clips/grabbers for fine pitch ICs

[ajb]

Got the Pomona 742902 clips today.  Photos attached showing them hooked to an SOIC and a TSSOP.  I made sure to include a bodge wire in the photo just to prove that yes, I am capable of soldering magnet wire onto leads.   

Unfortunately I'm still not impressed with these clips for 0.65mm pitch.  The photo has a bit of glare that makes it look like there's a gap between them, but they are actually touching.  It might be possible to finagle two adjacent clips into a position where they wouldn't touch on this IC, but three or more in a row wouldn't work out so well.  I'd say this particular part has roughly typical width leads for this package size; there's on SSOP on this board that has particularly thin leads, and on that the clips work substantially better.  These would be quite good for SOIC, but I don't see how they can claim that these will work on ICs down to 0.2mm pitch.

Guess it's time to look for the Mechano clips.