Laser Cutting Quality Low-Cost Solder Stencils from Mylar for Manual Surface-Mount PCB Assembly

This video demonstrates of the process I use to laser cut quality low-cost (≈$0.50 for a 4" x 4" stencil) solder stencils from 4-mil-thick mylar and 60-mil-thick chipboard. I learned of the technique of sandwiching a plastic film between two sheets of printer paper that are saturated with water from a nice tutorial video from EcProjects (   • Cutting Quality SMD Stencils with the Chin...  ). The water does a nice job of keeping the plastic film around the cuts from melting and warping. Sources for the materials that I use are as follows: • 4-mil mylar sheets: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09... • 60-point chipboard: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01... The Python script (make_stencil.py) that I wrote to process the .svg files plotted from KiCad into .svg files for cutting the frame and stencil is available from https://github.com/bminch/Eclectronics.