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how to make an offset solder mask relative to PCB land?

mfris

Hello,

I am trying to create a padstack for an LGA package, and the manufacturer suggests an offset solder mask relative to the PCB land - in this particular case they recommend a solder mask opening equal to the PCB land length + .3mm, with the solder mask extending .05mm beyond the land on the inner edge, and .25mm beyond the land on the outer edge.

I don't see an obvious way to do this when I create the padstack (the padstack editor centers the solder mask on the pin), and I'm not aware of any way I can select and move only the solder mask part of the padstack when I'm editing the component footprint. I thought perhaps I could create two padstacks - one with only copper/paste mask, one with only solder mask, but I'm guessing I'll have twice as many pins as I need if I do that.  Any thoughts on how to accomplish this the "right" way?

I'm using PCB Editor 16.5.

Thanks in advance for any help!

  • CCR77

    Hello,

           In the padstack editor select the soldermask layer and use the Offset X and Offset Y commands to get the desired result.  I just went through this a couple weeks ago.

    -Clint

          

  • mfris

    Thanks for the quick reply - I'm actually a little embarrassed at how simple that was after going back and checking.  Not sure how I missed that before.  Anyway, thanks again for the help.

    Related - since my pin/solder mask was no longer symmetric, I had to rotate half of the pins on my device after updating the padstack.  However, some pins would not complete a rotate in place - I had to move the pin, rotate the pin 90, move the pin again and rotate another 90 to get the rotate action to "stick".  Anyone else have that experience?  I had no issues with the first several pins, and then all of the sudden it was like the rotate feature was broken.  I temporarily changed the origin and grid spacing to make it easier to keep the pins lined up, but other than that I was making the same movements to rotate the pins each time.  As I said before, I was able to work around the issue, but it was still annoying/frustrating.

  • roberto85

    @mfris: HI, I know it is very frustrating to have this problem, the offset can be chose using the offset commands and if you have some issues with the rotating of the components then you should try EDIT->Spin command to rotate the components rather than the other rotate commands and hope it works.

    turn-key assembly 

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