playing around with a quick design for a simple paster that uses common 100x150mm stencils. i have the bigger ones but i wanted something that is portable, easy to use and qucik to setup and teardown and slightly above the old tape it to a table/pcb setup.
the stencil fits exactly in the top indent then sellotape/magnets (still working it out) and then the pcb goes in the second indent. using the 4 channels to align the pcb or use the threaded holes and cams or a pcb “inverse” to place it.
for a quick test i slapped it on, one side of sellotape, put the pcb under pushed it into place and swiped it with gc10.
i removed the stencil three times and put it back in this photo because i didn’t get enough onto one of the chip sides and i dont find gc10 as good as the paste i normally use, i know i know! and the paste is still nice and crisp
it is meant to only work for the most common prototype pcb’s i make, otherwise i use the bigger stencil setup.
Is this intended to be used with a fixed pre-determined PCB thickness? I would imagine you would need to design and fabricate a separate tool if you would need to paste a different thickness PCB. Which makes me wonder, how well this would work if 3D printed.
It would be super easy to just make a unique design if 3d printing. You could even incorporate an edge clamp to hold an unframed stencil in place. I’ll have to try that next time I build some prototypes.
yes its intended for a single thickness pcb, just have to run up one for each size used, its rare we change sizes, you could do the max depth then just add a shim too but more than likely i’d just mill it on demand.
i can never get flat enough results with my 3d printer and the shelf for the stencil is .12mm which is less than mine can handle. also the holes are m4 tapped.
still playing around with design changes for it, but so far it works pretty well.
plus the cnc is waaaay faster than my 3d printer
i might be able to laser out the stencil indent with the fibre laser or do a stack with the co2
