Turn a soda can into a solder stencil with a clean cut
A rotating blade opens the thin can without kinking it, leaving flat aluminium a laser can cut to shape.
A solder stencil is a thin sheet with holes cut where solder paste should land on a printed circuit board. Press paste through it and every pad gets the right amount in one go. On 3 October 2026, Hackaday's Donald Papp wrote up how Saheen Palayi makes these stencils from an empty drink can.
Everything comes down to the metal. Palayi uses the thin aluminium wall of a soda can, and the whole job hinges on opening that can without wrecking the sheet. Aluminium this thin crumples the moment you fight it. A kinked sheet is no good as a stencil.
His answer is a 3D-printed tool that works like a pipe cutter. It clamps around the can and holds a utility knife blade. The can turns, and with each rotation the tool presses the blade a little deeper, scoring the same line over and over until it parts. Because the cut deepens slowly while the can spins, the metal is never bent or forced, so it comes away flat rather than crumpled.
With the top and bottom gone, Palayi snips the leftover cylinder down one side and opens it into a flat, curved sheet. That is the raw stock for the stencil.
For the hole pattern he turns to a fiber laser, an xTool F1 Ultra. According to the write-up, the fiber laser's wavelength suits it to marking and cutting metal, so the pattern burns into the flat aluminium fast and the stencil is done.
Hackaday points out this is not the only route people have taken; earlier methods etched or machined the metal instead. And professionals skip cans entirely. "Professionally-made stencils are cut from steel, but for the home hacker, soda cans continue to be" a favourite, the article says.
Not everyone owns a fiber laser. A commenter quoted in the piece noted that people working with CO2 or low-power laser cutters, which struggle with metal, can cut their stencils from baking paper instead, and that it works reasonably well.