In Surface-Mount Assembly, you’re doing one of two things:
—or—
There is no middle ground.
A splice that slips, peels, misaligns, or jams a feeder doesn’t cost you $0.02 —
it costs your factory:
And when that happens, no one congratulates procurement for the cheapest tape in the building.
They demand to know:
Nine times out of ten, the root cause is simple:
A poor-quality foreign splice tape roll that never should have been allowed near high-speed pick-and-place equipment.
Don’t repeat the same costly mistake.
Cheap import splice tapes pretend to be savings.
What they deliver is unpredictable failure:
From suppliers you cannot hold accountable
If you cannot trace, test, and trust the product —
it has no place in a high-speed feeder.
✔ Your SMT uptime
✔ Your margins
✔ Your reputation
A single splice failure can cost:
| Failure Cause | Financial Impact |
|---|---|
| 1–2 min feeder jam | $500–$1,200 per event |
| Scrap of 20–50 boards | $1,000–$4,500 |
| Lost automotive/aero contract confidence | Immeasurable |
$0.02 saved ≠ $20,000 avoided loss
Every splice product should pass:
9 Required SMT Splice Qualification Tests
If a vendor cannot supply test data — they are not a supplier.
They are a liability.
| Requirement | Pass | Fail |
|---|---|---|
| Made in the U.S.A. with accountable QC | ✔ | ✘ |
| EIA-481 conformity report for every width | ✔ | ✘ |
| Documented ESD performance | ✔ | ✘ |
| Lot traceability + CoC | ✔ | ✘ |
| Sample testing allowed on your line | ✔ | ✘ |
| U.S. engineering support | ✔ | ✘ |
If three or more boxes fail → Reject Immediately
Splice tape performance is not a catalog claim —
it is a machine-verified truth.
That is why Sierra Electronics offers:
Put it on your feeders.
Watch uptime stay at 100%.
Then decide.
If production matters, reliability matters.
And if reliability matters, your splice tape supplier matters most.
