Solder stencil from 3 mil laminate sheets

[Mosaic]

I just spent a couple hours refining using these common 3mil laminator pouches to make solder stencils for SMD work. I used a full spectrum 5th gen, 40W hobby laser @ 50% raster pwr and 50% raster speed, to produce a 5.5" x 3.25" Stencil with 0805 and SOIC as the smallest pitch. Laminate sheet laid direct on the honeycomb platform to provide fume clearance. Well...fumes were hard to detect, if any.

Makes the stencil in 6 minutes and works great. Direct print from EAGLE CAD cream layers (solid), no gerber or pdf steps required. I find it more economical on solder paste consumption to place a blob on pad concentrations and spread from there, leaving large fill areas untouched.

 

[Inquisitive]

Can you share some photos. I'm interested.

 

[Mosaic]

Sure:



All soldered via hot air, no bridging probs or tombstone events....much better results than toothpick applied paste!
Stencil is reusable, and it's very cheap.

 

[Triode]

Looks nice, thanks for sharing.

 

[Mosaic]

This looks interesting:
https://www.electro-tech-online.com...iy-pick-and-place-machine-for-1300-00.144557/