SMD stencils

[rthorntn]

Hi All,

I have a laser cutter, the Darkly Labs Emblaser, 4w laser power from memory.

I want to cut solder paste stencils with it, any tips, tricks and/or recommendations?

It looks like thick 0.127mm (5 mil) Polyimide (Kapton) film is popular for this, if it makes sense does anyone have a cheap source for this?

The vendor mentioned to me that thin Kapton tape doesn't work well because of over-burn which makes sense.

In the vendor forums someone mentioned using overhead projector transparencies but his last post was about having to play with the power/speed to get the best results.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers
Richard

[JS]

Mylar maybe? Used to insulate electric motor windings is easy to get where you get coil wire and other electric motor related parts. Should be quite cheap for the application, it does handle temperature very well but I don't know how it will behave with the laser.

JS