Another QFN oopsie here. The QFN looks good and the stencil cut-outs look good. The mask, though, as shown in the middle, is not good. In general, you shouldn’t put mask on the QFN land pad except to cover up open vias.
The QFN center thermal pad for this part should be free of solder mask. The stencil does give a good amount of paste — roughly 50% coverage; maybe a little more.
That’s the way we like it. But, with the mask on the board, there will be too much solder and too much with nothing to stick to. It will either flow to the small metal areas and raise the QFN up so the sides don’t solder or the excess solder may turn into solder balls and short something out.
There are some cases where it’s okay to only expose the metal in small areas of the QFN thermal pad (see here), but if you do that, the stencil has to match the pattern. Otherwise, like in yesterday’s post, you’ll probably end up with a gloppy mess.
Duane Benson
That’s the way aha aha your pcbs like it aha aha