In a submission to Hackaday, developer Henk details three methods for creating solder stencils using a vinyl cutter, a CO2 laser, and a fiber laser.
To begin, the gerber files from the PCB design are converted to a PNG and then to a vector file for the lasers.
The first, cut from a CO2 laser, was done on masking tape, which works well for larger cutouts but not for small components, and vinyl sheet release paper, which holds together better.
A vinyl cutter was also used, but it didn’t perform as well as the CO2 laser due to the tearing issues caused by the blade.
The final method utilised a fiber laser and a drinks can to create a metal stencil.
The fiber laser was able to cut clean footprints in the aluminium, creating a stencil that would hold up to more use than the paper variations.
