Solder Stencil Fun

Well that’s all it was, was fun.  We didn’t get anything usable out of these two attempts at making solder stencils.  The goal was to use kapton film as the stencil. Dave ordered 3mil from the US but got 2mil delivered. A bit of a drag since the kapton is cheap but after you get taken advantage of by fedex and the brokerage houses it gets to be expensive especially when you get the wrong stuff delivered.  Oh well end rant.  The laser does a fine job on paper in this video, but melts the kapton.  The vinyl cutter works ok but does not make straight cuts since the blade pivots around the center of the spindle and you end up with a lot of rhomboid shapes. The holes also tore in places.  So at the end of the day the vinyl cutter would work if you ordered all the horizontal  and vertical cuts, and the laser might work if the power was correct, along with the focus. There is much more work to be done.