Fiber laser for stencil cutting

[Miklos Endresz]

Hi,

I'd like to know are 20W or 30W fiber laser machines useful to cut SMT stencils?

There are many brands: Atomstack M4, ComMarker B4, etc.

For me it's not a problem if it takes a few hours to cut a small stencil. It is also not a problem if I need to use softer metal sheet which won't last as long as stainless steel stencils. 

The important thing is to cut great quality stencil which can be used for high pitch TQFP chips. (TQFP100, TQFP144, etc.)

Miklos

[derek.hodge70]

I have used a co2 laser to make stencils out of mylar sheets (transparent plastic) they came out well and worked perfectly. My feeling is that cutting metal with a low powered fiber laser would create warping of the material, I was trying to cut a scalpel blade earlier this week with a 50w fiber laser to reshape it without real success, it was thicker though at 0.4mm.

Sent from my Galaxy

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[bert shivaan]

I have cut a stencil that was just for testing purposes on my 30W fiber galvo.

My opinion is I will just order from JLCPCB instead. It came out ok, but still needed work like dedurring and such. If for larger parts like >= 0603 I think it would be fine in a pinch. But really I have to order the PCB, so for another $10 I can have the stencil with it all framed and tensioned.

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[Miklos Endresz]

I cut mylar stencils for SOIC chips and 0805 components with my CO2 laser. It's ok, but I was unable to cut good stencils for big chips, like 100-144 pin ATMEGAs and STM32 chips. Yeah, it's easier to order the stencils from JLCPCB.

Thanks.

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[Sandra Carroll]

I have a Cloudray 60W mopa that I use and have cut stainless 0.004" stencils.
i had to tweak the Freq/Pulse width and use lower power,  also use engraving not cutting to do it.

For my usage it worked find

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From: ope...@googlegroups.com <ope...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Miklos Endresz <mend...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2024 5:19 AM
To: ope...@googlegroups.com <ope...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [OpenPnP] Fiber laser for stencil cutting

 

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[bing luo]

The laser  which is tens of watts, can only be used to carve patterns on wood and plastic, and can't cut any material. At least 1000W of power is required to have application value in the SMT industry.

[Miklos Endresz]

There are a lot of lasers. Now we are talking about fiber lasers (YAG) 1064nm wave length. CO2 lasers (10600nm) behave very differently. For metal cutting low power CO2 lasers are useless but they are good for wood, acrylic, etc. An 50W CO2 laser can do nothing with a metal plate but a 50W fiber laser can deep engrave or even cut thru it. For stencils we need only 0.1-0.15mm thick metal which is not much for a fiber laser. Even 20-30W fiber lasers are pretty good for coin engraving. 

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