Laser Stencil Tutorial - laser beam characteristics

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roo123
 
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Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 11:42 pm

Laser Stencil Tutorial - laser beam characteristics

Post by roo123 »

In the tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/smt-manufact ... t-stencils

the solder pads are shrunk by 2 mil (2 thousandths of an inch = 0.05mm).

Does that imply that the Adafruit lasercutter has an effective beam width of 4 mil when cutting this material (Kapton film)?

Which lasercutter do you use? With what tech specs?

Anything you can say about how to achieve a nice narrow beam width?

I'm really motivated to get this to work because IMHO applying solder paste by hand is the WORST task in a SMT PCB job!


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roo123
 
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Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 11:42 pm

Re: Laser Stencil Tutorial - laser beam characteristics

Post by roo123 »

Thanks.

In the tutorial you use 2 mil Kapton film.

Reading around, solder paste stencils seem to be thicker than that: upwards of 5 mil.

Any comments?

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