Solder mask missing on some components

Hi All

I am designing my first board with Kicad. It is 4 layers with components on both sides. I have just made the Gerbers and found that all of the SMD components on the back of the board and two on the front do not have a solder mask defined and hence could not be soldered.

I think this may have been caused by me having the b.mask layer switched off when I designed the board. I had to turn this on when i made the Gerber plots. The components affected are all from the standard libraries. Some of the same component types have the mask, others don’t.

I Have

  1. Ensured that the mask is switched on in the footprint editor. It is - the footprint editor for the board shows that no mask exists for that component if it is not visible in PCBNEW.
  2. I have re-run the CVPCB to re-assign the components to the foot prints and then recreated the netlist. I then re-imported the net list. Still the problem persists.

Can anyone tell me whether the cache.lib file could be the problem? The original components have the solder mask layer but I have somehow deleted it in some of the components on the board.

Any help gratefully received

Thanks

John

Edit the properties of one of these devices (mouse cursor over it, hit [E] key).
Click [Change Footprint(s)] in the window that comes up
Select the option you want and then hit [Apply].
Does that help?

2 Likes

Hi Joan

I selected a rear component, pressed E then went to change footprints and then selected update all footprints on the board. This took a few seconds and all the masks were back in place. Thank you very much for your help. I don’t know how I got into that mess but is was easy to fix (once you told me how).

Just a bit of final fettling and I can send it off to be made.

Anyone want to buy an Eagle professional license?

Thanks

John

2 Likes

Loving this forum!

Had the same problem and thought I would have to manually reload all the footprints.

Worked like a charm.

Cheers Deon

This also saved my life!! On a tight deadline! Fortunately the board house noticed that most of my pads were covered by the solder mask and informed me. Thanks to this forum, I was able to turn it around very quickly!!