Do you guys provide this service or can you point me in the right direction?
PCB-Pool makes them quite cheaply.
Leon
I’m in the US and would prefer something local, if possible.
Pololu makes laser-cut plastic solder stencils — for industrial quantities and really fine pitch they recommend you go with stainless-steel, but mylar’s good enough for small runs or hobbyist stuff.
wiml:
Pololu makes laser-cut plastic solder stencils — for industrial quantities and really fine pitch they recommend you go with stainless-steel, but mylar’s good enough for small runs or hobbyist stuff.
Thanks. I sent them an e-mail. Their site doesn’t mention solder stencils directly and Eagle doesn’t appear to be able to output a file with the correct format, so hopefully they’ll reply.
Before FreePCB has a solder paste gerber file I would just edit the top layer solder mask gerber by hand to remove non-SMT pads. FreePCB is nice enough to coment each section so it was easy to remove through hole pads. Pentalogix has a $50 gerber editor that will make the job point and click.
We have used Polou for mylar stencils. The price is right for doing small quantities. For about $100 you can get a unframed stainless steel stencil from most stencil houses. Otherwise a production framed stainless stencil is about $300.
-James Jarvis
APRS World, LLC
If you check out Lecture 9 in Sparkfun’s “Beginning Embedded Electronics Tutorials”, the CAM file that they supply for Eagle adds the ability to output a solder stencil.