Hello,
I make my own parts for my boards and am curious what others do and use on their personal projects, so far as soldermasking over pads that have little consequence. Parts like large reservoir filter capacitors that are firmly attached to the PCB have no use in having exposed pad on the mounting side where they cover the pad. I like to have pad exposed for my resistors so that I can do soldering on the top of the board at any time, but other parts do not need pad exposed that are only soldered underneath. Do others here soldermask over all the pads on the top layer? What parts do you do differently? I know there's less risk of shorts with more soldermasking, but where do you draw the lines, if any?
Thanks
I make my own parts for my boards and am curious what others do and use on their personal projects, so far as soldermasking over pads that have little consequence. Parts like large reservoir filter capacitors that are firmly attached to the PCB have no use in having exposed pad on the mounting side where they cover the pad. I like to have pad exposed for my resistors so that I can do soldering on the top of the board at any time, but other parts do not need pad exposed that are only soldered underneath. Do others here soldermask over all the pads on the top layer? What parts do you do differently? I know there's less risk of shorts with more soldermasking, but where do you draw the lines, if any?
Thanks