One of my recent projects has several LEDs in a row.
I made the hole tolerances as tight as as could in the hopes that this alone would keep the LEDs fairly well aligned; it didn’t work.
At the moment, my next plan is to have a template laser cut to physically hold the LEDs in place as they are hand soldered. Yet, I don’t know what KiCad can output and what is typical for a machine house to require at minimal effort to import into their CAM system for their laser cutter machine.
Any ideas?
Can’t you just export as a dxf, then drop the appropriate hole size over the centre of the footprint?
That way you would then just have a DXF to cut on CNC or laser etc to make the suitable mask for holding the LEDs.
At least that’s what I do when having to make a mask for holding LEDs as they go through a wave solder machine…
Why introduce a whole new flow ?
If the PCB allows, and it looks like it might, just add some 3mm+ or 5mm+ holes as needed, on the same pitch as the LEDs - then you use one PCB to ‘hold’ the leds on another during solder.
There are also commercially available led holders to do this.
Basis form is a cylinder with 2 holes (lengthwize) for the LED legs.
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