> > $75.00 for a metal, laser cut stencil, or I can cut the solder pads
> > our of plastic with an exacto knife.
$75 is pretty cheap for stencils, well worth the laser cut ones, it will
save you much agravation. In the past, one could get chemcially etched
stencils, but they did not work anywhere near as well as the laser cut ones.
One key thing is you can put multiple pcb's on one stencil, back when we
were paying $600/stencil, we probably had 4-5 boards on each one to keep
costs low.
I doubt you could manually cut the stencils with an exacto knife to within a
few thousands. One usually plays some games with the stencil size to
optimize process. For a couple boards, probably the xacto might work, but
for even 10, you really need the precision, otherwise you pay for it in
rework time.
Used EFD machines are pretty cheap, and once you get the bugs out do very
well. Just write down the settings for each pad size and remember to reset
them for every footprint change.
Ron