gerber-to-scad 0.1.7

Solder stencil generator, converts gerber files to a 3d-printable openSCAD solder stencil

gerber_to_scad

Simple python script for converting gerber files into a 3d printable solder stencil scad file

This repository has both a CLI tool, and a web app you can run locally or self-host. The tool used to run online at solder-stencil.me, but this is currently offline. If anyone misses it, let me know and I might bring it back!

Installation

• To install just the library: pip install gerber-to-scad
• To install the library and the web service: pip install "gerber-to-scad[service]"

gerber_to_scad requires python3.10 or higher.

Development setup

• Clone the repo
• Make sure you have poetry installed.
• Run poetry install.
• To activate the poetry virtualenv, run poetry shell.

Note: on M1 macs, scipy doesn't install correctly out of the box. If you're getting installation errors, try this:

brew install openblas
export OPENBLAS="$(brew --prefix openblas)"
poetry install

Usage

You'll get some information on available options if you run it with the -h argument:

(env) $ gerber_to_scad -h
# Or:
(env) $ python -m gerber_to_scad -h
usage: main.py [-h] [-t THICKNESS] [-n] [-L LEDGE_THICKNESS] [-g GAP]
                         [-i INCREASE_HOLE_SIZE]
                         outline_file solderpaste_file output_file

Convert gerber files to an scad 3d printable solder stencil.

positional arguments:
  outline_file          Outline file
  solderpaste_file      Solderpaste file
  output_file           Output file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -t THICKNESS, --thickness THICKNESS
                        Thickness (in mm) of the stencil. Make sure this is a
                        multiple of the layer height you use for printing
                        (default: 0.2)
  -n, --no-ledge        By default, a ledge around half the outline of the
                        board is included, to allow aligning the stencil
                        easily. Pass this to exclude this ledge.
  -f, --full-ledge      By default, a ledge around half the outline of the
                        board is included. Pass this to make the ledge around
                        the full perimeter instead of half.
  -L LEDGE_THICKNESS, --ledge-thickness LEDGE_THICKNESS
                        Thickness of the stencil ledge. This should be less than
                        the thickness of the PCB (default: 1.2)
  -g GAP, --gap GAP     Gap (in mm) between board and stencil ledge. Increase
                        this if the fit of the stencil is too tight (default:
                        0.0)
  -i INCREASE_HOLE_SIZE, --increase-hole-size INCREASE_HOLE_SIZE
                        Increase the size of all holes in the stencil by this
                        amount (in mm). Use this if you find holes get printed
                        smaller than they should (default: 0.0)

For basic usage, simply run the script with input files for the gerber outline and solderpaste files and specify an output:

gerber_to_scad outline_file.gko toppaste_file.gtp output.scad

Specifying a .stl file as the output file will directly call OpenSCAD to create the STL - if OpenSCAD is not on the path, you can use --openscad-binary=<path> to specify it

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome, I don't have a lot of time to spend on this project, but I try to review PRs as much as I can!

• Please use ruff to format your code - if you use VS code, you can open the gerber_to_scad.code-workspace file to get all the right automatic formatting in your editor, or you can just run ruff format . in the project root.