Tools
Practical tools for SMD stencil design
An accurate stencil is the foundation of reliable paste printing. The right tooling and settings reduce waste and assembly defects.
Stencil design tooling
CAM tools and Gerber output should support controlled aperture reduction.
- Frame definition
- Stencil thickness control
- BGA and QFN pad review
Aperture rules
Over-reducing apertures causes insufficient paste and weak joints.
- Separate rules for large and small pads
- Thermal pad home-plate strategy
- Stencil orientation on the line
Pre-production validation
Match the final stencil file with BOM and centroid before fabrication.
- Assembly team review
- Limited first-run test
- Approved revision recorded