Reduce pad size for Stencil automatically

Hi, is there any way to reduce the size of pads automatically for stencil production? Inside KiCAD, via Plugin or external software for gerber or dxf.
Thank you :slight_smile:

You mean stencil for solder paste ? Each footprint in KiCAD has already a solder paste definition (F.Paste and B.Paste), that are normally the pad form with a reduced size.

There’s absolute and relative paste clearance settings on board, footprint and pad level.

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Nearly all official footprints should be setup such that you can simply set the paste clearance on the board level and get what you want.

The exceptions are footprints where the manufacturer specified that the paste needs to be handled in a specific way. And of course the center (or exposed) pads for things like QFN the paste layer is split for these (as suggested by every manufacturer application note i ever read). For both of these paste only pads are used which ensures that whatever you set in the global clearance will not affect them.

And of course there could be buggy footprints in the lib so double checking can not hurt.

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