I haven’t had a chance to check on the state of the solder paste but I hear it is gud. Thanks mark for making a stencil.
Edit: I’ve also printed out a few sets of the instructions and will bring some RGB LEDs for testing out final cats.
Also i have some super fine wire solder for all you hand-soldering peeps.
@lukecyca My party cat board vanished around the laser printer when I was cutting the stencil. Do you have another board I can purchase? I used one of Adams
Great work everyone! Sorry again that I couldn’t be there last night. I will try be there next Thursday to help with programming.
About a Stencil
Kicad can export the layers as SVG, so I went ahead and made an SVG of just the soldermask layer. Keep in mind that some of these pads are for through-hole components, or are unused/optional. I would suggest editing this SVG to only include the SMD pads. I don’t have an SVG-editor on my computer at the moment. If someone wants to do the above (and make it a DXF) and submit a pull request, I would be grateful!
@lukecyca. I believe what you want to export is the Solder Paste Layer and not the Solder Mask Layer.
" F.Mask will be the solder mask layer, this is the part of the circuit where you want to peel back the solder mask to expose pads so you can solder to the copper. This will include all surface mount pads, but it will also include through hole pads and vias.
The F.Paste layer is meant for manufacturing stencils. It will only include surface mount pads and exclude through holes and vias. However, the pads will normally be slightly undersized to reduce the amount of paste being reflowed. Too much solder paste can lead to bridging or tombstoning of components."
Thanks! I’ve generated this layer as a DXF and removed the previous SVG. Kicad only included the appropriate pads, so I think this is ready to laser cut.
any of these cool cat kits still kicking around?..would you be able to ship a couple to the koots? will pay shipping of course, thanks for sharing bringing the party with these lil cats…big ups to the Open Source Hardware!
Hey guys, I’m pretty sure I have 3 or 4 kits left, but I’m fresh out of ESP8266 modules. I can order more but due to the holiday in China right now, it could take a while.
@Mike_Savage PM me if you’d like the kits without the ESP chip, or whether you want them with the chip and are willing to wait a month.
@mike likewise, let me know. I will do another run of boards if there is interest.