Automatic stencil creation

Automatic stencil creation Bruce

A solder paste stencil may be automatically created with a script. An autostencil script automatically generates a stencil by selecting the appropriate frame and stencil thickness, board placement, fiducials and stencil opening adjustment as specified in the script. In many cases, a stencil can be generated with one click!

Use the Autostencil|Create script from current settings command to create a script based on the current settings in the Stencil module, for example just after setting up a standard stencil.

The MacaosDemo script is supplied with the program. This script will create a 150 µm stencil with 15% global reduction of stencil openings. To modify this script or create additional scripts, open the script manager.

The available scripts are listed at the top of the left column. Clicking on a script name loads the selected script so that its properties may be viewed or modified. These properties include:

  • Select frame or size: The frame or size of the stencil

  • Stencil thickness: The thickness of the stencil

  • Placement of board within frame: The location of the board on the stencil.

  • Double-sided stencil: Specifies if both board sides should be on one stencil.

  • Mirroring of bottom data: Specifies if and how bottom side data is mirrored.

  • Fiducial detection: Specifies if and how objects in the stencil data should be treated as fiducials rather than openings.

  • Adjustment of stencil openings: Specifies global adjustment of opening sizes and corner radius for stencil openings.

Additional operations (such as adjustment of individual openings, split openings, reduced thickness regions, text operations and deletion of objects) must be carried out after the script has been run.

Use the buttons at the bottom of the Scripts pane save scripts. Right-click in the scripts list to delete, rename, import or export a script. Note: If a stencil script has the same name as a panel script, then a stencil will automatically be created after creating a panel with that script.

Scripts are stored together with the user's program settings. To share a script with another user, export the script to a file and send the file to the other user for import into their script manager.

There may also be scripts available for download at www.macaos.com/support/panelscripts.