Wiha 26810 5.7-Inch Precision Chip Lifter

The chip lifter is a German designed product made in Poland, not in China. It is very good quality and works well to pull socketed IC chips from old circuit boards like arcade boards and synthesizer PCBs. It has a nice tapered handle and does not feel cheap. The tip to tip measurement of the tool is 7.7 inches. The item was packaged well and arrived quickly from Michigan in the United States.

What is a chip lifter? A bent screwdriver with a groove in the blade! I’ve bent a lot of screwdrivers in my time, I work on classic cars. But none have had the perfect bend that the Germans discovered when designing and creating the chip lifter! It may sound like I’m joking, but this thing is really awesome. I am actually joking, and this thing is still really awesome! It’s so easy to use: you stick it under the edge of the chip and you lift. Then you go to the other side of the chip and you lift a little more. That is if it hasn’t already popped out. I used to struggle with lifting ships with my fingernails bending the pins smooshing the things, etc. Now I lift chips like a pro! Z 80 processor? Lifted. M 6800 processor? Lifted. PIA’s EPROMs stupid discontinued Fairchild chips? All Lifted. It’s grippy, it fits in your pocket, and I’ve accidentally tried to straighten the blade and it won’t straighten so that covers his build quality right there! Now let’s be a lot more serious. If you do any sort of MPU or CPU work, you really need to have one of these. I’m always afraid it will get lost and I should buy another one. But if I had two, chances are I would lose both of them. I think that’s a Murphy’s law. Highly recommended. Purchase one today!

Just buy it it's great. Everyone needs one. You know how many problems this solves? You will soon

If you are "swapping" DIP-8 opamps and the board they go onto uses SOIC-8 to DIP adapters, you should have this tool! The SOIC-8 solder pads can easily be stressed and lifted by trying to pull up or rock a DIP chip out of a high quality (tight) DIP socket that is soldered to the SOIC pads on the PCB. Lifting the pads on the PCB will usually tear the attached copper traces and any vias, rendering the board non-functional. This isnt a problem with cheap DIP sockets that tend to loosen up on their own, but then losing pin-to-socket contact is a problem. There are special tools to help remove high pin count DIP chips from sockets, and they do a nice job, but they dont really support 8 pin DIP and in many cases, if you are swapping audio opamps, you might be using discrete designs or SMT devices that are on a PCB slightly larger than the DIP-8 socket, and these larger tools wont work at all there. This tool slips neatly into the slot on each end of nearly every DIP-8 socket and that permits you to jack a plugged DIP device from the DIP socket, a little bit and one end at a time. Just pry under each end of the DIP using that slot for leverage. Like opening a tin of paint. This removes almost all the stress from the SOIC pads on the board. Any downside with this tool? Well it does require some space at both ends of each DIP socket to be able to fit the "blade" and rock the tool itself. So a socket surrounded by taller parts can prevent the tool from being used as it comes out of the blister pack. It might take a creative extra bend in the tool itself to make it function in that case.

This was exactly what I needed to lift chips from the PCB board. Makes life easier.

This tool is best suited for extracting narrow width dip packages with less than 10 pins, making it ideal for 8 pin op-amps and small memories. However, it may not be suitable for boards filled with 74XX logic due to the risk of slowing down the process and potentially bending a pin. While it serves its purpose well for specific tasks, it's essential to assess whether you will truly benefit from its functionality before making a purchase decision.

Just the right computer repair tool I was looking for

Works perfect

Works beautifully. Much easier than whatever it was I was trying to do before :P

In my recent attempts to recapture my youth (ie messing around with retro computer equipment), I soon discovered that some of the old ICs have died and need replacing. This tool will not work in every situation but I would say it is essential to have one for when it can be used. It seems very well made and I think it will last a long time. The only drawback is the price. A little expensive when compared to a flat blade screwdriver (and not as useful around the house) but still worth the money

Great for the project at hand. Able to lift chips without damage to the pins that can be damaged otherwise. Makes the job easy.

This is a useful tool: the angle of the bend is just right to lift chips out of sockets without damaging them, and the little tooth on the end of it is great for straightening pins and wiggling them out of through-holes when desoldering. My only complaint is that the handle feels a little cheap, with sharp mould lines that haven't been sanded down properly, but I've already bought a second one of these as I use it all the time.

Love this thing works well.