PCB Manufacturing Question - A320 FCU

Greetings,

I found a PCB layout for an FCU display board. It's very good and uses the LED displays from Opencockpits. There are also boards for other A320 panels/parts. A problem though, it was designed in a French PCB design program called TCI, and that software does not appear to output a Gerber file for the solder mask. I can get the drill file, top, bottom, and silk screen layers, but the PCB factory tells me they have to have the solder mask too. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any ideas,
Buddy

You definitely want the solder mask file if you can get one. Surprised that TCI doesn't support that. Are you sure that it isn't output as some other filename? So I assume you know what the solder mask does, right? It is a coating that is applied to the PCB that keeps the solder from sticking to the board except where the solder pads are. Without the mask, I believe all the traces will be exposed (not just the pads) and the solder will flow down the traces instead of just staying where the pads are. Technically it could still work but would be less fun to solder and presents all kinds of other problems. You might be able to find somebody who could import the gerber files you do have into a cad program like EagleCAD and it shouldn't be too terrible difficult to then create a solder mask file for you and output new gerber files. I'd do it for you myself except I'm limited to a 3x3" board I think and I'm not super knowledgeable about EagleCad. You might be able to hire a PCB factory to do the same for you for a fee. They often have folks on staff that could do it for a fee.

Thanks for the reply. Yes I know what it does, I just didn't want to have to re-draw the board. I told the factory to make them without the mask so I can get something in-hand to evaluate the whole design. If it works out then I'll go ahead and re-draw or try to import into Dex or something. I feel ok without the mask since there's no surface-mount components.