8/4/2026 at 5:59:04 AM
Why is this posted here? It's old, and it's not terribly relevant, though it's not useless.For anything larger than 2 pins, pin 1 at upper left and pin 1 at lower left are both quite common. Components are also reeled more or less randomly. (There are some patterns, but you'll be better served by pretending there aren't.)
Put that all together and it means... it's all a cluster and gets manual intervention for every build. You can't automate it, but you can automate the intervention (that's what JLCPCB has done to enable scaling to lower volumes).
Just pick "lower left" or "upper left" for your library and stick to it. That's the best you can realistically do.
Also, LEDs are terrible and everyone hates them.
by exmadscientist
8/4/2026 at 7:56:35 PM
(I'm the OP) I got interested in PCBA, one thing lead to another, and I ended up posting this document which hopefully can provoke some good discussions :-)I was also specifically interested in how critical the manual intervention seems to be - and how accepted it is. What are the barriers to automating this completely?
If the assembly fab had access to the schematic (I know a lot of people wouldn't want to share the schematic, but if we suppose that's not a problem), would that clarify most situations?
Is 100% automation possible at all?
by gregsadetsky