I mentioned that in my original reply to Rich, if it makes sense then you can simply trim to length and drop the parts in and not worry about it. In our case there are ~140 DIP ICs that get placed into the board x 8 seconds a part for our CS400s = almost 19 min vs 2.5 min for DIP insertion. I don't think we're doing 16.5 min of trimming. Also our CS400s are the bottleneck and hand stuffing that many parts probably wouldn't be a good idea. But we may be able to back off the DIP clinch even farther to a 20 - 30 degree bend .... and not have parts fall/bounce out during processing. MIKE ############################################################## TechNet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d ############################################################## To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TECHNET <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TECHNET ############################################################## Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. If you need assistance - contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ##############################################################