Stenchill is now a JLCPCB Advocate (and here is why that matters)
Stenchill has joined the JLCPCB Advocate program. If you create your JLCPCB account through the banner on this site, you directly help Stenchill, it costs you nothing, and you land $123 worth of discount coupons on the way in.
Now the longer version, because I would rather be straight with you than drop a banner and say nothing.
Who is writing this
Quick introduction, since this is the first post on this blog. I go by Chewby. I have been a developer for twenty years, mostly Java and Angular in my day job, with an electronics background that never really left me. Stenchill came out of that mix: enough software to write the geometry engine, enough hardware to know what a stencil has to look like to actually be usable on a real board. I built it alone, on evenings and weekends.
Stenchill has been running out of my own pocket
Stenchill is free. No account wall, no export limit, no "pro" tier hiding the useful features. That was the plan from day one and it has not changed.
But free for you is not free to run. There is a server, a domain, bandwidth, storage, the geometry engine chewing through your Gerbers, plus all the stencil printing tests I run to check that what comes out of the printer actually works, which burns through filament, print hours and a fair number of failed prints. And on top of that, a lot of evenings and weekends spent writing the engine, the KiCad plugin, the translations (those ones with AI assistance, I do not speak nine languages), and fixing the bugs you report.
So far, all of that has come out of my own pocket. I do not regret a minute of it, but I would like the project to stand on its own instead of quietly draining my bank account every month.
About the donations
A few of you have already sent a donation, and I want to thank you properly for it: that made my day, every single time. Seeing someone decide that a free tool was worth a few euros of their own money is a very different signal from a download counter going up. Those messages are a big part of why I kept going.
The honest part is that donations alone do not cover the bill. There have been a handful, not a stream, and that is fairly normal for a niche tool. I am not going to guilt trip anyone, but I will say it plainly: it would be nice if the goal got covered once in a while. Not every month, not by everyone. If a small share of the people who use Stenchill regularly dropped a few euros once in a year, the question would simply stop coming up.
It also means I need a second source that does not depend on someone opening their wallet.
The donation link stays up, and it stays entirely optional. Nothing in Stenchill will ever be locked behind it.
The part nobody puts on a donation page
I live in France, affectionately known around here as the land of the tax form. In practice that means everything I receive, donation or sponsorship, gets declared. It also means I need a proper legal structure behind it, which is why Stenchill sits under ADC Studio, my company. That is not a detail. A project like this cannot quietly collect money on the side, and I would not want it to anyway.
And about the numbers, since I am being transparent: the €80 a month I am asking for covers the infrastructure. That is all it covers. Server, domain, bandwidth, storage. It does not pay for the development time, and the development time is where the real cost sits. The geometry engine, the KiCad plugin, the translations, the print tests, the bug hunts, that is hundreds of hours of evenings and weekends. Nobody is making a living off Stenchill and nobody is about to. The goal here is much more modest: stop losing money on it.
And even that modest goal is not being met. Since I put the donation system in place, it has never gone above 15%. I am stating that as a fact, not as a reproach. It is simply the reality of funding a free tool through goodwill alone, and it is exactly why I went looking for something else.
Why JLCPCB
Because it is the obvious fit. Stenchill exists to turn your Gerbers into a printable stencil, and most of you are ordering the matching board from JLCPCB anyway. There is no awkward stretch here, no unrelated sponsor. It is the same workflow, start to finish.
Now, to be completely clear about where this stands today: I am not earning a single cent from it yet. The program works on results. I have to prove first that the link actually brings in real signups before there is any reward on my side. So this is not me cashing in on a deal that is already signed, it is me at the starting line, telling you what I am trying to do.
What does not change either way: I get no access to your account, your orders or your designs. And Stenchill stays exactly what it is, free, and never conditional on you placing an order.
Where Stenchill stops
Being honest about money is one thing, being honest about the tool is another. So let me say it plainly: a 3D printed stencil is not the answer to everything.
There is a physical floor. Your printer's nozzle diameter and layer resolution set a minimum wall thickness between apertures, and below a certain component size those apertures stop releasing paste cleanly. On very fine pitch packages and the smallest passives, a printed stencil will fight you, and no amount of clever geometry on my side fixes a limit that belongs to the printer. When you are in that territory, order a proper stencil.
The other case is when you leave the prototyping phase. A printed stencil is perfect for a handful of boards on your bench. As soon as you start repeating runs, a laser cut steel stencil is more accurate, survives cleaning, and does not deform over time. That is the moment to buy the real thing, and JLCPCB makes them.
So Stenchill is the right tool for prototyping and for boards with reasonable footprints. Past that, use the tool that fits. I would rather tell you upfront than watch you fight a stencil that was never going to work.
How you can help, in 30 seconds
If you do not have a JLCPCB account yet, or if a friend is about to order their first board, use the banner on this page to sign up, or this link: jlcpcb.com. Signing up is free, and it is not a one way favour: every new account gets $123 worth of discount coupons to use on your orders. So you get something out of it, and so does Stenchill.
If you already have an account, no worries. There is another way to help and it takes less than a minute: leave a review. There is a form on the site made exactly for that, and so far very few people have taken the time, which is a shame because it really is quick. Reviews are what tell a newcomer that Stenchill is worth a try, and they tell me what to work on next.
Beyond that: talk about Stenchill around you, report a bug, send me a photo of a stencil that came out clean. And the donation link is still there if that is more your style. That is what has kept this project moving so far.
One last thing
Stenchill is an adventure, and I am having a blast with it. The geometry engine, the twisted edge cases you send me, the message from someone whose stencil came out perfect on the first try, that is what makes me open the editor again at eleven at night. I am not doing this reluctantly.
But like any adventure, it can come to an end. Not tomorrow, and not with a dramatic announcement. A project that costs money and hours without ever bringing any back eventually runs out of road, and I would rather say that plainly now than let the thing quietly go stale one day.
So if you like being able to get your stencils for almost nothing, this is the moment to give the project a push. Create your account through the banner, leave a review, tell someone about the tool. It costs you very little. On my side, it changes everything.
Thanks for using Stenchill.