Pololu offers low-cost, plastic stencils that are an economical alternative to metal stencils or hand soldering for prototypes and low-volume manufacturing runs of PC boards with surface-mounted components...
There is nothing new about stencil printing solder paste-except our price! Paying hundreds of dollars for a stainless steel stencil can be hard to justify for a prototype, but you can now get similar results for a tenth of the price. Our $25 minimum for 4 square inches is enough for a small board or a few surface-mount components on a larger board with through-hole components (i.e. we charge by the area we cut, not the area of your finished board). Even for larger-pitch packages, the time saved and improved results make the stencils a good choice for boards with more than a hundred or so pads.