I had seen this a couple years ago and tried it myself and got good results, especially considering how surface tension and solder paste 'pulls' parts into alignment - get some .004 copper 'foil', do a toner transfer on it w/ the gerber of the stencil file and then etch like you would a board. just takes a bit longer to etch and of course protect the back, but other than that works great. I have also seen it done w/ Al pop cans. W/ the pop cans you have to clean the inside as there is some coating, but a regular 'prep' for etching seems to work, nothing too thick.
Bob
--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "ohmware" <kaelin@...> wrote:
>
> My SMT adventures continue... I am making some promising progress, but I have discovered that the bronze sheets I am using to make stencils are destroying my tools! Cutting out one stencil for a small DCDC converter layout left my almost-new V60 tool unusably dull.
>
> The bronze sheets would be fine, I think, for larger pitch components where you can simply do a through-cut with a small end-mill. But my smallest end-mill is 0.02" and that's too large to stencil the pads for the 0.65mm pitch IC I am using.
>
> Has anyone used an alternative material for machining SMT stencils?
>