[smcameron]

At my local hackerspace, people sometimes laser cut solder stencils out of transparencies -- the plastic sheets you use with overhead projecters. The trick is to put a piece of paper under the transparency when laser cutting, otherwise they tend to melt too much and deform, but somehow the piece of paper prevents this, maybe the laser needs something non-transparent to interact with to get the heat in quickly and move on quickly. Anyway they worked pretty well, but obviously not as durable as steel, so after some number of uses they start to wear out. (Can't remember how many really, but probably something like 20? more than just 3 or 4 I think. Probably also depends on the density of holes, a big swiss cheesed area will fail sooner.) If the circuit's not too big you can cut several stencils out of one transparency all in one go.