Hi All…
My board is all ready to go the the PCB fab house for prototypes, except for one small issue. There are fiducials we put in the top copper layer for alignment, in case I ever contract assembly out. The Gerber stencil layer is making a small hole to paste these fiducials.
I am using Eagle. What’s the proper way to add fiducials, or alternatively plug these holes int he stencil?
Thank you all very much.
I had a look in Eagle and cannot see a way of marking a pad to not be on the screen.
If these are the only circular pads on your screen layer then simply put a note on it that all round pads are to be removed.
Thanks very much. I just decided to move them to a part of the board where there are no components going on top of them. So there will be a dot of solder here and there. As long as its out fo the way, no harm dome.
In the Sparkfun library, there is a fiducial. I just slapped this on one of my boards and took a look at the cream layer (which I think is the screen layer). I did not see any indication that it was part of the cream layer.
I work in surface mount production and some of the stencils we use come with small indents where the fiducials are used. They don’t allow any paste through but are extremely useful when using automated screen printers as the camera can read them better and has less chance of getting confused. Basically they making for more accurate pastes which gives you better yields.