I want no shiny, smooth solder-mask in an area at the edge of my PCB. Being it is at the edge of my PCB, I can not have any traces or copper at the edge of the PCB. One method to omit mask area would be to draw a courtyard and define no mask under that; but I am guessing that would not omit the solder mask area, without a pad. I do not want to manually draw on the mask layer every time the Gerber’s are generated, because I am already at rev E. How can I eliminate some of the mask area without using any copper pads?
Draw directly on the mask layer with the graphics tools. Everywhere you draw on the mask layer will not get mask on the board.
One tip, if you know that you want (for example) 1mm of no mask along all the edges of the board, copy all the Edge.Cuts board edges to the mask layer, and change the width of the copied edges to 2mm.
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In case it wasn’t clear from @SembazuruCDE’s reply, the Mask layer is the only one in KiCad which is a negative layer. Putting content on that layer stops the solder mask from being applied in the content area.
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OK, Thanks, I thought I had to manually draw on the gerber mask layer every time the Gerber’s are generated, But, I drew a zone on PCBnew and that should stay for any future versions of this PCB.
Thanks for the good tips; that is why we have this site!
Do you want to have exposed copper on top or bottom of the pcb or do you want the whole edge plated. For the former see the other answers. For the later talk to your manufacturer if they can do something like that and how they want it communicated.
Are you sure this is right, I understand your original post to be that you want bare fibreglass near the edge, no copper or resist?
My original intent was to get an area at the edge of the PCB without the shinny smooth green solder-mask. I had avoided putting traces or copper in that area near the PCB edge. Being this was my first PCB, I thought I could edit the output Gerber files, but realized that I can just choose the top mask layer and graphically edit that!
I just got my boards back and it does indeed have a rectangle with out the smooth mask. I am going to put some potting compound around that area, covering some of the PCB and parts.
Bru
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