Inductor silk screen and alignment

[stephen Jones]

I have an inductor on a switch mode PSU, it is square with no polarity, and its pads are not visible from above. When I create the silk screen for the inductor how do I make sure its fitted by our manufacturer in the correct orientation and not 90 degrees rotated. Obviously they could just turn it over and check the pads and the obvious silk screen shape is a square but could that get us into trouble? Any pointers appreciated

[ajb]

Getting that sort of thing right is pretty much PCB Assembly 101.  The manufacturer will need to verify component orientation out of the tape versus the footprint anyway, since in-tape orientation varies and they don't immediately know what the 0° orientation of your footprints are.  Any decent manufacturer will contact you to clarify anything that isn't pretty obvious.  If the inductor has any markings at all that show its orientation, like printed text, the manufacturer may use those for verification--many optical inspection systems can read component text to verify correct orientation and fitment, so they would be programming that as part of the job setup anyway. 

[Matt-Brown]

When we build a first prototype for a customer we put double sided tape on the boards. Then we palce the parts and then engineering (me) picks the parts off and verifies every single rotation. We then use that now known good board to make an AOI program. When the assembly goes to production mode that aoi program verifies all the parts are correct