A Good DIY Solder Stencil Begins With A Cleanly-Sliced Soda Can

Solder stencils are a incredible option to precisely apply solder paste to a PCB. Professionally-made stencils are reduce from metal, however for the house hacker, soda cans proceed to be the choice of alternative. The solely trick is learn how to really get these little holes made, and [Saheen Palayi] reveals off each his method of laser-engraving the holes, as well as a tool for cutting the can within the first place.

To flip a soda can right into a flat-ish aluminum sheet means chopping off the ends and slicing it open. Ideally, one achieves this with out kinking or bending the skinny metallic. In follow, that is fairly troublesome. [Saheen]’s answer is one thing just a little like a pipe cutter — a 3D printed device that regularly presses a blade part from a utility knife into the empty can because it turns till it cuts by means of. Once the highest and backside are off, it’s simple sufficient to snip down the facet to get a curved sheet.

The gap sample comes from one’s PCB design software program of alternative, and the precise chopping is finished by a fiber laser. The wavelength of fiber lasers makes them good at marking and chopping metallic, and [Saheen]’s laser takes nearly no time in any respect to chop the stencil into the skinny metallic.

Fiber lasers was the type of device that solely industrial retailers had, however they’re a prosumer-level device that may be purchased on-line these days. [Saheen] makes use of an xTool F1 Ultra to chop his solder stencil, and we’ve beforehand seen that very same laser used to create a PCB by blasting away unwanted copper till solely the traces stay.

We’ve seen aluminum cans etched and likewise machined to create stencils, and the laser is actually the quickest. Watch it in motion within the video under.