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I was just wondering if an overlap of the silk and the solder was bad for the manufacturing, will it cause circuit cut out on the traces? example:enter image description here

All my error are always clearance problems related to silk and solder. Is it that important?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Yes, it is bad for manufacturing. I would think that your CAD tools would flag it or automatically trim the silkscreen. Also, the board house may trim it themselves, although they may also ask you about it, triggering a delay in your job getting completed. \$\endgroup\$
    – user57037
    Aug 6, 2017 at 20:49
  • \$\begingroup\$ It would be a big deal IF you actually had silkscreen printing on a pad. It would interfere with soldering. If the silkscreen is applied before the final board finishing operation, then it would probably interfere with board finishing (HASL, ENIG, or whatever). \$\endgroup\$
    – user57037
    Aug 6, 2017 at 20:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ Is there a way to desactivate the silk? Because I wanna do a copper pour, so it is inevitable for the two to interfere \$\endgroup\$
    – PyThagoras
    Aug 6, 2017 at 22:06

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You seem a bit confused. The layers are as follows: copper soldermask silkscreen

Copper traces, and, usually, copper pours are covered by default by soldermask. Usually vias are also covered by soldermask. It is OK to have silkscreen printing on the soldermask.

Pads, whether SMT or through hole, are typically not covered by soldermask, because if they were, you could not solder to them. For the same reason, pads should not be covered by silkscreen.

Fills, however, usually are covered by soldermask, even if the fill completely surrounds a pad. So you can have a giant rectangle of fill copper with a pad in the middle of it somewhere. Only the pad will have a soldermask opening.

You should design your component footprints so that silkscreen does not cover pads. Likewise, you should not place components so that the pad from one is in the silkscreen of another. If you do those two things, I don't think you will have any problem with silkscreen covering pads.

Also, you can probably check and edit the gerbers before you send them out to make sure the silk layers do not cover pads.

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