I’m exploring a new fab house, and they’ve expressed concerns about silkscreen outlines on small SMT parts. They argue that the ink height may interfere with the solder stencil, even though there’s no silkscreen under the parts. The outlines are located 10 mil away from any pad and are handy for manual rework. I’m open to removing them if it’s a genuine issue. Any advice or insights on this matter?
First, it’s great to see that you and your new vendor carefully looked over your design. It’s always smart to discuss things like this sooner than later. My guess is that they are using a thinner stencil. With the increasing density of PCB’s assemblers are using thinner stencils. You might see if you can use a thicker stencil. You can also relocate the designators, or you can leave them off the outside layer and make an assembly drawing showing them in detail. The choice should be wheter and why you need them. Assembly doesn’t need them, but it sure is helpful if the board ever needs troubleshooting. So your need should be decided on a balance with the assemblers requests.