While building PCBs on our manual pick and place machine we have been looking at various options to hold the PCB boards still while placing the components but without having to use complex clamps to hold the boards in place.

To solve the problem we tried holding the boards using small neodymium magnets and found that when using a 1mm thick steel back plate they would hold the PCB board secure and are still easy to remove when the board is complete.

PCB Holder base

We milled some small aluminium clips which have 1mm thick x 8mm diameter neodymium magnets glued into their base and have a small 1.4mm indent which holds against the edge of the PCB boards being built.

PCB Holder base

The PDF plans and sizes can be downloaded here.