As you know, when you grab EIB Pins with tweezers, many times the Pin shoots out of the tweezers before you can place the Pin in the EIB hole. The Pin is lost forever and you repeat the frustrating and inefficient process!

Here is an easy tip that will save you time and frustration when attaching microwires to EIBs using Neuralynx EIB Pins.

Fact: Stainless steel is assumed to be non-magnetic. However, only a few stainless steel alloys are truly non-magnetic; most are just slightly magnetic! Therefore, most stainless steel tweezers, like your EIB Pin Tweezers, can be slightly magnetized, which is exactly what you want. 

To magnetize your Tweezers, simply stroke the Tweezers in one direction a few times with a magnet. (Come on, you’re scientists, you should know this stuff!)

The EIB Pins are also slightly magnetic, though not magnetized, because Nickel is used as a base plating metal underneath the final gold plating layer, and Nickel will be attracted to a magnet.

This Tweezer-Pin combination allows you to pick up an individual EIB Pin by touching the Tweezer tips to the head of a Pin. The EIB Pin will naturally hang by the head - perfect for insertion into the EIB hole. If you do drop the Pin, it usually can be found (since it didn’t shoot out!) and easily picked up again for a second insertion attempt.

 If you need more magnetic holding force from the Tweezers, simply stroke them a few more times with the magnet. To reduce the magnetism, stroke the Tweezers with the magnet in the opposite direction.