>>"are your operators consciencious about picking up/saving and >>hand placing dropped parts?" Oh man....with all due respect, I'd surely not advise doing this. With the size of most SMT parts, the lack of marking, and the relatively cheap cost of most of them compared with the cost of diagnose> test> rework> retest, etc, I'd generally advise not ever doing this! If things are falling off in such quantities so as to make it economically feasible to reuse the parts, then the SMT process engineer should investigate the root cause and fix it, rather than try and reuse fallout.... Rgds and good luck! John -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=--=-=-=-=-= John Brewer Square D Component Engineering Raleigh NC --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------