Just curious. Reading the application notes for a LGA part I want to make a stencil for, the manufacturer recommends stencil thicknesses from 0.125mm to 0.36mm. Obviously, the plastic stencils sold by Pololu are much thicker. Anyone had success using these stencils with BGAs?
Hello.
We have several repeat customers who use our stencils with BGAs, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I think our stencils are suited to 2-layer PCBs with a few dollars of parts on them; by the time you’re talking about BGAs, you’re probably doing a multilayer board with more expensive parts, plus you can’t just touch up the parts where the print wasn’t as good as you would like.
Also, you should check your math: our stencils are thinner than 0.125mm. One mil is about 25 microns, so our 3-mil stencils would be about 75 microns, or 0.075mm, though there might be a bit of a lip around the aperture that could make the effective thickness a bit bigger.
- Jan
Right you are regarding my unit conversions. Whoops 
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