solder-stencil.me - The super simple gerber file to solder stencil stl converter.

Upload your gerber files (one for the paste layer and one for the outline), get an STL file.

If you use eagle, you can find a CAM script that will export the right layers here.

If you use Fritzing, select File -> Export -> For Production -> Extended Gerber and select a directory for the resulting files. Upload the file named your_project_contour.gm1 for the outline and your_project_pasteMaskTop.gtp for the paste layer.

This site is untested, unfinished, unpolished and unlikely to work for anything serious. Good luck.

File Upload

See bottom of the page for some usage hints.

Solder paste layer file

Outline layer file

Thickness (in mm) of the stencil. Make sure this is a multiple of the layer height you use for printing.

Include a ledge around half the outline of the board, to allow aligning the stencil easily.

Height of the stencil ledge. This should be less than the thickness of the PCB.

Gap (in mm) between board and stencil ledge. Increase this if the fit of the stencil is too tight.

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.

Replace regions (usually rounded rectangles) with bounding boxes. Use this if you find the processing takes extremely long, but note it might have unintended effects other than removing rounded corners.

Flip the stencil (use this for bottom layer stencils)

Force width of the stencil (in mm) when outline file is not specified.

Force height of the stencil (in mm) when outline file is not specified.

Set this to create rectangular area with specified margin (in mm) to use it as outline if outline file is not specified.

Hints

If you find the pads and holes don't align properly, try increasing the distance between board and ledge by a few tenths of a millimeter. If that's not it, your printer's calibration might be off.
You can use negative values for hole size increase to increase the separation between closely spaced tabs, to allow printing a separating line. The downside is that this makes all pads smaller.
Some boards can produce 2-dimensional walls if pads directly touch each other, which can throw of slicers. If this happens, increase the hole size very slightly (like 0.001mm) to make the holes overlap.
The thicker the stencil and the smaller the solder pads, the more paste will stick to the stencil. If you're not getting enough paste on the pads, make the holes bigger or reduce the stencil thickness.
If you deactivate ledge inclusion, you can still use the "gap between stencil and ledge" option to increase the size of the stencil outside of the board. This might come in useful if you're using a stencil frame or jig.
If you've got a file that's not working right, send it to me at rob@kirberich.uk and I'll have a look to see what's up.

Special thanks to kazade for the brilliant idea of using OpenSCAD to make this work. This app uses pcb-tools to read Gerber files and SolidPython to generate OpenSCAD code. OpenSCAD is used to generate the resulting STL files. The website is built using Django.

You can find the code for the underlying converter at https://github.com/kirberich/gerber_to_scad. The code for the web app can be found at https://github.com/kirberich/gerber_to_scad_service.

Version 0.1.2