A Good DIY Solder Stencil Begins With A Cleanly-Sliced Soda Can

October 3, 2026 by Donald Papp 10 Comments

Solder stencils are a fantastic way to accurately apply solder paste to a PCB. Professionally-made stencils are cut from steel, but for the home hacker, soda cans continue to be the alternative of choice. The only trick is how to actually get those little holes made, and [Saheen Palayi] shows off both his method of laser-engraving the holes, as well as a tool for cutting the can in the first place.

A good result starts with cutting a can cleanly, thanks to a 3D-printed tool.

To turn a soda can into a flat-ish aluminum sheet means cutting off the ends and slicing it open. Ideally, one achieves this without kinking or bending the thin metal. In practice, this is quite difficult. [Saheen]’s solution is something a little like a pipe cutter — a 3D printed tool that gradually presses a blade section from a utility knife into the empty can as it turns until it cuts through. Once the top and bottom are off, it’s easy enough to snip down the side to get a curved sheet.

The hole pattern comes from one’s PCB design software of choice, and the actual cutting is done by a fiber laser. The wavelength of fiber lasers makes them good at marking and cutting metal, and [Saheen]’s laser takes almost no time at all to cut the stencil into the thin metal.

Fiber lasers used to be the sort of tool that only industrial shops had, but they’re a prosumer-level tool that can be bought online nowadays. [Saheen] uses an xTool F1 Ultra to cut his solder stencil, and we’ve previously seen that same laser used to create a PCB by blasting away unwanted copper until only the traces remain.

We’ve seen aluminum cans etched and also machined to create stencils, and the laser is certainly the fastest. Watch it in action in the video below.

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Flexible PCBs: Not Only For The Few

July 27, 2026 by Jenny List 2 Comments

Flexible printed circuit boards are a fascinating technique for making electronics venture beyond the two-dimensional, but surprisingly they’re not something many of us have worked with. [Jessica Stanley] gave a talk at the recent Electromagnetic Field event in the UK, exploring the different ways to make your electronics bend.

She starts with an overview of flexible electronics, detailing the techniques used with conventional polyimide substrates and etched copper. We’re particularly enamoured of a stretchable PCB made by coiling a flexible circuit round a piece of elastic. Since she’s looking for techniques accessible to everyone that don’t either cost a fortune or require dangerous chemicals we look at conductive paint and electrolysis, before arriving at using a vinyl cutter to create adhesive traces.

We’ve no doubt all noticed that flexible PCBs can be ordered from the usual fabrication houses at a price, but the value in this talk lies in reminding the viewer that this is not the only path. She demonstrates well that simple flexible PCBs can be within the reach of almost anyone, which is perhaps the encouragement needed for people to try this medium. The full talk is below the break.

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Saving Some Coin With 3D Printed Stencils

July 23, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 20 Comments

One of the extra tools someone might need when working with surface-mount components is a solder paste stencil, which not only simplifies the application of solder paste to a PCB but increases accuracy. These metal stencils can cost an annoying amount of money and take time to get delivered, so this group has developed a method to 3D print them instead.

Starting with a PCB design in one’s tool of choice, the Gerber files can be sent to the online Stenchill tool to generate the stencil. Alternatively, a KiCad plugin exists as well. The tool will output files for a 3D printer from there. An FDM printer is required, with either PLA or PETG filament, and some configuration in the slicer is needed to get the accuracy required for a useful stencil. But once that’s all set up, the printer can output a perfectly usable stencil at a fraction of the cost, and without having to wait days for delivery through the mail.

It’s not all upside, though. Although it might be better than applying solder paste with a syringe on a massive board or doing more than one smaller board by hand, it may not be as good as a metal stencil for extremely small pads. But for those who often find themselves using metal stencils and dealing with the downsides that come with them, this could be a viable alternative, especially when prototyping.

If you have a laser cutter handy, that opens up some additional options for stencil production.

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PCBs Straight From The Magazine

June 19, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 32 Comments

It’s never been easier to get a printed circuit board made. In fact, almost every electronics video out on the internet will incessantly remind you of this fact now. But making a custom PCB wasn’t always as straightforward as sending a KiCad file to a board house. Many DIY methods involve harsh chemicals and tedious processes, but did have the potential benefit of taking much less time than waiting on boards to arrive in the mail. [Bettina Neumryr] is demonstrating one of these older methods, called the toner transfer method, using a circuit that was printed directly in an old magazine.

The first part of the toner transfer method is to create an image that can be printed. Since this circuit came from a magazine, it is first scanned in to a computer and imported into GIMP, where it can be scaled to match the size of the components and then sharpened to make a crisp print. With the image ready, it’s time to print the image onto some toner transfer paper, ensuring that the printer in question is a laser printer which actually uses toner. From there, a sheet of blank copper PCB is prepared and then the toner is transferred by heating, in this case using a laminator. After that its etched, removing all of the copper not protected by the toner, and then the toner itself can be removed which leaves behind the copper traces.

For those of you who were around when toner transfer was in vogue, this video might not have much value. But for anyone who can’t use a board manufacturer for whatever reason or is looking for alternatives, a modern video showing the method could be much more useful and have better context for beginners than videos made a decade or more ago now. Some of those older methods include similar processes using inkjet printers instead, but there are more modern DIY methods as well using lasers or CNC machines too.

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DIY Ceramic Circuit Boards Surely Count As Solarpunk

June 3, 2026 by Tyler August 19 Comments

Solarpunk is all about combining that DIY hacker ethos with sustainability and renewable resources. Our usual PCB manufacturing methods, with their bevy of chemical baths and petrochemical resins aren’t exactly the most sustainable. Digging up some clay and firing it into a circuit board? Very sustainable! And apparently doable, as demonstrated by [Emily Velasco] on Mastadon.

Of course anybody could take a ceramic wafer and call it a circuit board, but that’s only part of what [Emily] did. The ceramic wafer is apparently native clay, which is very cool. Even cooler is that she’s baked the traces into the pottery. While you could conceivably use some sort of conductive glaze for this, what [Emily] did was stamp her desired circuit into the unfired ceramic using a 3D-printed stamp, and then fill the depression with copper powder after the first firing. After that, a second firing is done in a reducing atmosphere to melt/sinter the copper together–it’s not totally clear which is happening here–without burning up.

The results speak for themselves; on the finished demo board, a pair of LEDs blink happily away, driven by the astable oscillator circuit baked right into the clay– and of course the components soldered to it. You’ll have to click through to see it, though.

Given those not-so-sustainable petrochemicals behind our favourite PCBs may be in short supply, this is a timely hack. If it seems familiar, that’s because we featured virtually the same technique last year, but using more-expensive silver powder instead of copper, and a campfire instead of a kiln.

Thanks to [smellsofbikes] for the tip!

Through-Glass Vias And The Long Road To Glass Substrates

May 25, 2026 by Maya Posch 16 Comments

Glass-based substrates are slowly beginning to push out organic substrates – as also commonly used in PCBs – due to often superior material properties for packaging. One area where glass substrates have however struggled is with through-hole vias and providing the conductive copper path through them. A 2024 article by [Keith Best] gives a good overview of the topic, with recent news showing how much companies like Intel are pushing for glass substrates, specifically for the packaging of dies.

One major advantage with vias in glass substrates is that they can be much smaller, enabling smaller than 0.1 mm diameter holes with far finer pitch. The challenge here is to make perfect holes with a laser that are defect-free, as well as have the intended diameter.

After that this through-glass via (TGV) has to be coated or filled with copper, much like their organic equivalent. Said TGV can be fully filled with copper, or use plating and add dielectric filler. Detecting flaws in such a finished TGV is important.

In a 2025 review article of glass substrate technologies by [Pratik Nimbalkar] et al. published in Chips the state of the art at the time was covered. The need for ever higher-density integration options with ASICs is highlight here, especially now that many chips today consist of multiple interconnected dies inside a single package.

The complications of creating TGVs with femtosecond laser pulses in Borofloat 33 glass are highlighted by [Daniel Franz] et al. in a 2025 research article, with microcracks and backside ablation observed without proper precautions, something which previously was often resolved by an etching step following said laser drilling. The main issue here is the post-drilling residual stress from the thermal shock, which the authors demonstrate can be largely prevented with careful tweaking of the laser drilling parameters.

As pointed out in a 2024 review article by [Chen Yu] et al. glass substrates are useful for far more than just high-density chip packaging. Glass substrates are also chemically resistant, have a higher heat resistance, are largely transparent to RF and can be hermetically sealed against outside influences. This makes them great for various advanced sensors and communication devices.

Meanwhile, if you wanted to do some metal-depositing on glass at home, we covered this recently.

A desk fan with an air filter. On the side, the final assembled PCB is visible.

Making A PCB The Old-Fashioned Way

May 21, 2026 by Julian Scheffers 60 Comments

Nearly all modern PCBs are designed with the help of EDA software, but not all of them. [ALTco] shows us the process of plotting out a board the old-fashioned way — by hand.

Back in the day, drawing out the traces on a PCB lead to beautiful, smooth lines that [ALTco] wanted to imitate. But first, he needed to figure out how the rest of the fabrication process worked. He starts by just experimenting, both with the “resist” markers and paint, and the etching compound. Things rarely work first-try, and neither did his home-made etchant. So then it was time to buy some ferric chloride, the standard copper etchant for PBCs. A few more tests sorted out which permanent marker worked best.

[ALTco] starts by thoroughly cleaning a raw copper-clad board so the marker sticks properly, then draws the circuit for a little analog fan controller. The board is then laid in a bath of the etchant for several minutes while gently rocking it to keep the reaction going. Finally the board is taken out, etchant stored for re-use, and the board washed with water and then presumably IPA to remove the remaining marker. Some assembly of the newly-printed circuit board later and you have a cute little smoke absorber for your soldering projects.

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