SolderSCAD: 3D printed solder masks!

thingiverse

Update: script is here: https://github.com/bluecoast/SolderSCAD I wrote a script to convert solder stencil gerbers to STL via OpenSCAD. It takes advantage of the similarity between OpenSCAD and photoplotting by first converting all defined apertures to OpenSCAD modules, then calling them individually whenever that aperture is flashed later in the file. It doesn't yet handle draws (only flashes) or aperture macros, but those don't seem to be used in solder paste layers. Instructions I haven't tried printing the result yet -- it may be totally infeasible. So this is just an experiment at this point. If someone does print one, please upload a photo. A fine-pitch board would want a 4 or 5-mil stencil -- so .10 -.13mm overall height (a challenge for sure). I imagine both sides will need to be pretty smooth -- I don't know how to print that or whether it's even possible (maybe printing on glass then doing a post-cure heat with another piece on top?). I have printed some thin, nice single layers in past (by accident :P) that look like they'd work. Some directions to take this: -importing the board outline (right now just adds 10cm to the min and max coords to form the actual stencil part) -using that info to make a pocket for localizing the stencil -it will be harder to implement draws... maybe as hulls of each consecutive pair of coordinates in sequence (that would work for lines anyway). Not needed for stencils regardless. -I haven't even looked at what an aperture macro is. If they are just sets of lesser apertures, that would be fairly easy to handle -everything is converted directly to 3D... might be faster to convert to a big 2D shape and extrude it (my script was under a second for the example STL; OpenSCAD however took 8 minutes to render it)