Tube vs Tray for Design for Manufacture

[qbradq]

I am choosing between two different packages of IC, one offered in tube and one in tray. I am designing the product with volume manufacture in mind. In general, are tube packs or trays preferable? Or does it depend on the assembler? The part is not available in tape without a 100% price increase even at volume

Thank you,
QBRADQ

[reagle]

It depends on the assembler and the machines they have. In general trays may take more feeder slots than vibration feeders used for tubes, and tubes take more space than reels.
So in the end it's the total number of feeders slots your board needs versus what they can fit on the machine. If it does not all fit, now you are either hand placing larger parts or settinp up multiple machines

[Alphatronique]

Hi

ask you assembler but most of time it tray

tube feeder was unreliable 

here what we do is to transfer from tube to tape

Best regard

[JoeyP]

Trays will almost always be preferred. Most assemblers have plenty of component capacity (unless your board has a very large BOM or the CM is very small), so you don't have to worry too much about number of feeder slots.

Trays always feed more reliably than tubes. Nothing causes more grief to a CM than parts which must be fed out of a tube. The vibratory feeders they use for tube parts "just" work when properly adjusted, and if you have two different parts with significantly different mass or tube size then it can be impossible to get the feeder to feed both parts reliably.

[qbradq]

Thank you all for the replies and insight! It is very helpful to get some advice from those with experience before my first run.