Hello All,
I have been doing alot of DIY drivers in my home made reflow oven, and the stencils are hard to hold in place. I have started 3D printing some stencils and “mounts” for the boards. Basically it’s just a board outline which we moved over to Fusion 360, cut the shape out of a block the size of the stencil and then 3D print it.
This let’s the board sit down in a slot, while you lay your stencil over it. Then you can easily apply paste. I wanted to share this idea, and see if anyone else can offer some improvements. I think there are some better ways to do this, but with 3D printing you are limited to what resolution you can get. The minimum layer height my printers can achieve is around 0.10mm therefore, the paste stencils come out as around 0.12 or 0.13mm tall and I am not sure how viable this will be for reflowing drivers.
Here are some photos of the prototype which aren’t full-size, I made the base much larger for my stainless steel stencil. The final 3D printed only product will fit the driver, at it’s depth plus the 0.12mm for the stencil. Then you drop in your driver, add the stencil on top and then it’s in place to apply paste. Thoughts, ideas? Improvements?