Carriers / Tape & Reel
The dominant pick-and-place carrier: components in pocketed tape wound on a reel.
| Standard | EIA-481 / IEC 60286-3 |
| Machine feeding | Yes — automated feeder |
| Also known as | T&R, reel, embossed tape, carrier tape |
Components sit in embossed or punched pockets in a continuous carrier tape, sealed with a cover tape and wound on a reel. Sprocket holes along one edge index the tape as the feeder advances it. Tape width (8, 12, 16, 24 mm…), pocket pitch and — crucially — component orientation are standardized by EIA-481. This is the default supply format for volume SMT.
On the machine
Loads into a standard tape feeder; width and pitch must match. The cover tape peels into a take-up as parts are picked.
Orientation & placement rotation
EIA-481 fixes how each component sits in the tape pocket, so the machine always picks it at that angle. That orientation rarely matches the footprint's 0° in your CAD tool — the difference is the rotation offset a job needs before it will place correctly. The converter applies that correction →
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