Solder mask missing on some components

Layout Footprints
1

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

2

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
3

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
4

Loving this forum!

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

Worked like a charm.

Cheers Deon

5

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!!