John Fields wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
gore wrote:

I work at an electronics contract manufacturimg facility. We do work for
several companies and I wonder why they use different labels on the
schematics and pcb's to refer to IC's. Some of them have a U1, an A1, and
X1, or an IC1. Why do they do this? Is there a standard used to label IC's
in a schematic? Just curious why this is.

X should be a crystal.

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No, a crystal is designated with a 'Y'.

What you're probably thinking about is the abbreviation for 'crystal',
'XTAL'.

You won't see any Y crystals in Europe IME.


A would be an amplifier (I haven't ever seen that btw)

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Then how would you know?

Anyway, it's not for 'amplifier, it's for 'assembly'.

Which is hardly a pcb component is it ?


IC is self-explanatory and is widely used in Europe
U is some weird US practice. U for what ?
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Unit.

Terrell disagrees. I have now heard explanations of Unknown, Unique and Unit !

IC otoh is 100% unambiguous.

Graham