Solder mask could be removed from solder jumpers to make it easier to close

[LorandBiro]

Hey,

I’ve soldered the right side of the keyboard twice now, and I really struggled with closing the solder jumpers. The first time, I even damaged the pads and had to bodge-wire around the damage. The second time, I used some diode legs to help bridge the jumpers, but it was still a challenge.

Looking at the PCB footprint, it seems there's solder mask between the pads of the solder jumpers. I’m using KiCad 9, and when I update the footprint, the solder mask gets removed from the pads. I guess the default footprint for solder jumpers in older versions didn’t exclude the mask.

In the screenshot below, I updated the footprint of the left solder jumper. You can see the area where the solder mask is excluded:

I double-checked the released Gerber files, and they also show solder mask between the pads. Removing the mask should make it much easier to bridge the pads.

[tompi]

Hi! Sorry, but im really an amateur when it comes to PCB design...
I just used this footprint for the jumpers:
Jumper:SolderJumper-2_P1.3mm_Open_TrianglePad1.0x1.5mm

It comes with the standard kicad library, you think this should be fixed there?

[LorandBiro]

You're right. KiCad has already changed the built-in solder jumper footprints. If you update to KiCad 9, select the solder jumpers and choose ‘Update Footprint…’, it’ll use the latest version of that footprint and update your PCB.

I didn’t open a PR for this since upgrading to KiCad 9 would trigger a lot of changes in the project files, but it’s a trivial fix if you want to do it yourself.