Homebrew PCBs

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "mcjonster" <mcjonster@...>
To: <Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:21 PM
Subject: [Homebrew_PCBs] pcb pads?


>I noticed a lot of recommend land patterns are way bigger than the device 
>leads.  Like an eTSSOP-24 has only .25mm wide legs but the recommend pad 
>width is .45mm with .65mm center to center (leaving .2mm between pads).  Is 
>it safe to make the pads thinner so there's say .3mm or .35mm between the 
>pads?  I find my solder paste balls up and I get shorts which I need to 
>manually fix later otherwise.

Pads need to be the correct size to get a proper solder fillet - see the IPC 
recommendations. For home-made PCBs it won't make much difference.

Leon