I think a nice follow-up to this might be making footprints for shielded cans and driven guards, both of which require solder mask openings. Or was this covered in PCB distributed elements? Anyway, since I use Kicad, I usually just pop to the solder mask layer and draw the opening directly. A good adjunct would be how to specify whether the opening is to be HASL, ENIG, or whatever on a board with multiple treatments for different bits of exposed copper.
@@Zachariah-Peterson Did you also cover the best way to open solder mask over traces, for instance on high frequency RF traces where you don't want the solder masks Dk to influence the impedance of your trace at high frequencies? You often want the solder mask opening to be above the trace and also the shielding vias coplanar ground around the RF trace. The problem with setting a custom solder mask opening rule on the track is that it opens the mask at the ends of the track too. I have been using fill regions to open the mask but it becomes very tedious to do this around series and shunt components since you usually want to keep a solder dam around pads. Maybe this is something Altium cannot do easily, but if it can, it would be great to have a tutorial.
Get some interesting effects by doing normal silkscreen text and then put bolded copy into unmasked copper underneath. Done that with copyright/version info or logos for some really cool looks on projects😊
Love the vids Zach! Im “cramming” for some big design reviews. Could you make a similar video on solder paste? Ive struggled with tiny ESD protection packages floating on pads. The datasheet footprint is sometimes missing the paste dimensions and im not sure what the correct amount is without going through trial and error.
If its a part with a large center gnd/heatsink contact normally need to shrink paste down to 70-80% of that pad size and if there is large difference between it and other pads so it floats part above them then break the paste up into several smaller areas with gaps so solder has to flow together to fill underneath at same time part pads are forming fillets. The gaps allow the flux to escape without forming voids. If you have thermal vias in the that center pad make sure you plug them and try to align paste in between them so they don't steal the solder. Still might have to experiment some to get it right but following these tips should get you most of the way there.
The subs are talking about "copper pore" instead of "copper pour". This video is intended as an "educational" video from the leading producer of EDA tools. There should be enough marketing budget to get a proofreader that actually knows the topic...
I'm guessing they just use automated speech to text that RUclips does for them which can also do language translations but as you noticed it makes mistakes.
I think a nice follow-up to this might be making footprints for shielded cans and driven guards, both of which require solder mask openings. Or was this covered in PCB distributed elements? Anyway, since I use Kicad, I usually just pop to the solder mask layer and draw the opening directly.
A good adjunct would be how to specify whether the opening is to be HASL, ENIG, or whatever on a board with multiple treatments for different bits of exposed copper.
We did this question in another video, stay tuned
@@Zachariah-Peterson Did you also cover the best way to open solder mask over traces, for instance on high frequency RF traces where you don't want the solder masks Dk to influence the impedance of your trace at high frequencies? You often want the solder mask opening to be above the trace and also the shielding vias coplanar ground around the RF trace. The problem with setting a custom solder mask opening rule on the track is that it opens the mask at the ends of the track too. I have been using fill regions to open the mask but it becomes very tedious to do this around series and shunt components since you usually want to keep a solder dam around pads. Maybe this is something Altium cannot do easily, but if it can, it would be great to have a tutorial.
How about making text in copper (gold enig) and open the soldermask for each letter? Wouldn't that make some shiny text!
Get some interesting effects by doing normal silkscreen text and then put bolded copy into unmasked copper underneath. Done that with copyright/version info or logos for some really cool looks on projects😊
Love the vids Zach! Im “cramming” for some big design reviews.
Could you make a similar video on solder paste? Ive struggled with tiny ESD protection packages floating on pads. The datasheet footprint is sometimes missing the paste dimensions and im not sure what the correct amount is without going through trial and error.
If its a part with a large center gnd/heatsink contact normally need to shrink paste down to 70-80% of that pad size and if there is large difference between it and other pads so it floats part above them then break the paste up into several smaller areas with gaps so solder has to flow together to fill underneath at same time part pads are forming fillets. The gaps allow the flux to escape without forming voids. If you have thermal vias in the that center pad make sure you plug them and try to align paste in between them so they don't steal the solder. Still might have to experiment some to get it right but following these tips should get you most of the way there.
Thank you sir, for explaining it well..👍
Thanks
The subs are talking about "copper pore" instead of "copper pour". This video is intended as an "educational" video from the leading producer of EDA tools. There should be enough marketing budget to get a proofreader that actually knows the topic...
I'm guessing they just use automated speech to text that RUclips does for them which can also do language translations but as you noticed it makes mistakes.