You can't get any electronics project done without some sort of good proper wire, in particular, the kind that carries up to and is the kind that would be well suited for PCB work.

It has to be said that it is little known but wires actually do rot on the inside such that if you strip a cable that has not been used for a long time, you might be very surprised that the wires on the inside that have been stripped simply cannot be soldered anymore. The symptoms are very frustrating because you end up shooting up the solder temperature or adding too much flux and insisting because even though the metal has oxidized, you are sure that it should work and the solder joint can be made. However, to reduce costs, a lot of wires partially blend the "real metal", such as the typically expensive copper and these days, even the aluminum for aluminum wires, with some compound like brass or others that will simply not be able to be soldered. Bear in mind that if you ever get into a loophole that you can't seem to get out of, that your soldering skills might still be very good but that the wire you are using might have just rotted entirely and simply cannot be soldered anymore.

The market regarding wires is a thunder-dome of scams, pseudo-scams and outright lies. If you look at the cable illustrated previously, the color is absolutely perfect and it looks like this is some proper copper wire. Furthermore, it is advertised for wire that can be used for speakers leading the buyer to believe that it is indeed pure copper in order to have a good performance. However, if you look closely, the label says copper-clad which means that it only has a little copper on the inside but that the rest is some other compound that is not even able to carry any electricity. To be fair, this product was the worst that ever crossed our workbench. It was expensive compared to the baseline and it was not even rotted but simply refused to be soldered, at all! It went straight into the bin.

A good source of wires, if your electronics cross with computer engineering, are older Ethernet cables. An Ethernet cable has 6 inner wires, typically made of copper due to the standard having to be respected, the wires are easy to unbraid and typically per meter an Ethernet cable can sometimes be cheaper than wire that is advertised as copper (for instance, an older Ethernet cable will be much cheaper than the brand new, expensive and useless cable in the former illustration).

Maybe the only drawback is that the braided copper wires inside the Ethernet cable are actually a little more rigid than the usual wires used in electronics projects. However, interestingly, that sort of rigidity is something that can grow on you and can be actually more useful than having a less rigid copper wire.

Electric screwdrivers come in all shapes and sizes and there are some very affordable ones out there ranging from well-known brands like Xiaomi and down to less popular brands.

However, when selecting an electric screwdriver, it is an observation that people tend to want the screwdriver to have a powerful electrical torque and frequently electric screwdrivers get rated based on their rotational speed or torque force that they can exert in order to extract screws.

The problem is that electric screwdrivers are meant to give the user the luxury of not having to perform the repetitive turning motion to extract a screw, yet only after it has been dislodged from the hole and they are not meant to be screw extractors that can bust out hard to extract screws. There exist tools that indeed are meant to remove screws that are not easy to be removed, some of these solutions even geared at extreme situations where the screw and the material it screws into have welded together due to rust and corrosion but those tools have little to do with an electric screwdriver.

Intuitively, the electric screwdriver is used firstly without engaging the electrical motor, in order to dislodge a screw just a little and only then the electrical motor is used to turn until the screw is extracted all the way. Some basic mechanical properties apply, for instance, a screw head with a longer shaft will provide additional torque for free, such that these bits should be preferable to shorter bits.

Here is a list of properties that are frequently used as selling points of electric screwdrivers with a discussion on why they are or should not be considered vital:

Note that brands tend to not matter too much when purchasing an electric screwdriver, they all have a mix of each other's features and flaws, even with the quality varying. Also note that brands that you would have thought are "cheap" might have, in the meanwhile, become expensive, which is the case of Xiaomi that is now almost considered a "posh Chinese brand" that does have nice screwdrivers but also suffers from the same flaws as all the rest of the other brands.

In any case, to dispel the myth, the torque of an electric screwdriver is for the purpose of eliminating repetitive human tasks (just like all other automation), namely the turning motion of the screw driver, until the screw is extracted, not to pull out hard-to-remove or rusted and welded screws (for which other tools are more appropriate.

By wrapping up a slice of painter's tape around a connector a container can be created that can then have hot melt glue poured into it in order to create a mold around a cable as a replacement plastic holder. This technique has been used several times, for instance to create a mini-DIN gender changer and a replacement holder for an improvised SO53 socket.

The technique consists in creating a mold out of painter's tape that is cheap, easily adjustable and just enough to hold in all the plastic. Then, hot melt glue is poured into the mold created by the painter's tape. Finally, a hot air gun is used to heat up the plastic (again) inside the mold in order to obtain an uniform and proper results instead of bits and bobs of plastic. If need be, a cutter can be used to just trim off any excess.

Interestingly, hot melt glue is associated with the sloppiest of jobs but for creating plastic molds, it seems ideal and the plastic material seem hard and durable enough after it settles.