DIY Socket Repair Tool: Easy & Safe Guide

If you need a socket repair tool and don't want to do it yourself, you can buy one online. Online repair sockets come with a lot of features, but they’re not exactly cheap. If you don’t need all those features, you can follow this guide and DIY one yourself.

You'll need to prepare the box separately; other parts can be salvaged from old stuff or bought directly. For making holes, you can use a step drill bit or a rotary tool manually. All the parts are shown in the picture below.

If you often repair boards with spring-loaded inputs, you can use a perforated board to make some pins: there are 6.3mm pins, 4.8mm pins, and common transformer input pins. They work just like a standard five-hole socket — neutral on the left, live on the right — easy to tell apart.

The ceramic lamp holder can be taken from an old desk lamp, and the five-hole socket can be salvaged from a Bull power strip.

Use a 150W bulb and mount the lamp holder at the bottom; this keeps the overall height low. For most problems, the bulb alone will do the trick, but just to be safe, you can also add a 2A fuse.

Once the 2A fuse is installed, it's really handy to use. The pins and the outer casing are mostly flush, but since the connections are still exposed, safety is important.

If you like things a bit cleaner, you can glue a piece of plastic cut from the holes on top — it helps a little. The pins are almost flush with the box surface.

Done.