Hey fella's,

I just bought thousands of dollars of all sorts of components from a PCB building company here is Central Florida on the space coast. Unbelievable deal. Purchased everything for $60!!!

Included were about 50 full reels of through hole resistors, inductors etc... Another 50 reels of smd components of all kinds.... And a ton of large boxes completely jam-packed and full of a sort of components. Everything you can possibly think of...
SCORE OF THE CENTURY!!!

I've started going through everything to inventory what I have and I came across a piece of strip/tape about 5 feet long off of a through-hole components reel that I assumed was just resistors. I then realize that this is no ordinary strip...
(pictures attached)
Instead of being all one type of resistor, it's a strip of all different types of components. Every ~100 components, the same components repeat...

I'm assuming that each 100 components are meant to be used in a particular circuit but I can only assume...

***You know now that I I am writing this, it just dawned on me that maybe the company I had got all this stuff from had this particular reel of through hole components custom made for a particular project / pcb they were manufacturing...

What do you think?

 

That is a strip of pre-sequenced components for a Universal brand 'VCD' machine, which is the through-hole, axial lead equivalent of an SMT pick and place machine. The VCD is paired with a sequencer, which picks parts off reels of axial-lead components then tapes them up together like so.

 

As stated in the previous post, the sequenced and taped components are given to an automated PCB assembly machine that cuts, forms and places the components on to the PCB in the correct sequence. The board is then flow soldered.

 

I remember these from when I started work back in the mid 1970s – are they still used in automatic PCB assembly?

 

Hymie: We still have a sequencer and VCD at work, but they sit idle most of the time now (they were in constant use back in the '90s). The set we have is even driven by an ancient PDP-11! A slightly more modern MS-DOS box is used for loading the programs into the PDP-11. Given how rarely it is used now, I give it a year before it is written off.

 

As an apprentice, I operated the bandolier machine that produced the sequence of components for transfer to what I called the stapling machine. I thought to myself, my life would be much easier if the stapling machine could handle all the differing bandolierd reels – automatically selecting the correct component as required.

 

Someone needs to make an audiotape of one of these sequencing / bandolier machines running a few different programs before they are all decommissioned. There is something strangely relaxing / mesmerizing about the rhythmic chugging as the reel shears are operated. (the racket the VCD makes, on the other hand, is just a notch above pure noise, except for the welcome whine of the turntable signifying the end of that board).