Brilliant idea ... but how many devices do you need to get in order to guarantee having the essential details?
Is a strip of 100 enough? A strip of 20 looks like poor odds.
Thanks! Unfortunately, the short answer is (as usual), "It depends." If you add a PO number or customer reference, those get printed on each strip, if space allows. Certain supplier names are quite long, while others are short. In general, to get everything, you should probably order at least 600mm of tape. 2mm pitch tape means 300 pieces. 4mm pitch tape means 150 pieces. As a good rule of thumb, 0402 and smaller parts are 2mm pitch. 0603 and larger is 4mm pitch.
200mm of tape is required for any printing. Every printed strip includes a "Tracing ID" which allows you to look up all the information about the parts, even if there's not room to print it.
On longer strips, we print all the information up to ten times, spaced equally along the length of tape.