Yes, 0201 is very small, soldering such small component requires high assembly skills and precision equipment. Or it is easy to cause poor assembly.
And it’s a LED, so the person placing it needs to see the cathode mark, it’s going to require a reasonable microscope to be able to do this by hand . . . and a good set of tweezers and steady hand.
a hot air gun can also be used from below the board after applying paste or tinning the pads … to determine the polarity, it makes sense to put the diode on the breadboard and connect the tester
At 0.6mm x 0.3mm approx. isn’t there a risk it will fall into the holes and be lost for all eternity ?
What about light pipes (fishing line? don’t know, I don’t fish) from more conventionally sized LEDs elsewhere?
Trying to get them all up the middle of a pole and then bent, not exceeding the radius where light will start to escape, so they all fit to the right place within the 9.2x5.2mm head would be a physical challenge.
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Easily solved!
If you need 200 LEDs order 2000. The first 1800 will fill the surrounding holes, leaving the last 200 for testing. 
Not to mention the other 4 wires in the same pole required to operate the three LEDs above the number indicator.
I think the pole will be considerably oversized and not acceptable for the rivet counter brigade.
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I wish my eyes were young again to the point where I could see a 0201 LED without glasses. 
seeing the Cathode mark on some 0603s is a challenge even with glasses . . .
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No) phones at the component level are quite successful in repairing
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Hopefully you have a microscope, it’s the only way to go with these things and I’ve done everything including 01005. Currently I only wear glasses for driving and still have steady hands. I’d love the opportunity to work on these boards too.
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We do and we also have a manual pick and place with vacuum and closeup camera, it’s not great but it gets the job done for the occasional prototype or one off bespoke board build.
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I wonder if it would be somehow feasible to DIY bond bare LED dies.
Probably too much. You’d neither get the bare dies nor the conductive epoxy in small volume.
Also I don’t think there is any workaround to having a proper wire bonder (a small manual one would do).
Would be fun though and give a perfect result.
Having read the comments and thinking it through, I came to the conclusion that manually placing the LEDs is not a viable option. The placing alone seems problematic. + I don’t good enough tools for that.
(and 0201 is really F’ing small)
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Good call, my conclusion as well. Leave it to the machines.
BTW, it seems the Inolux and Lumex 0201 LEDs share (almost) the same package, but suggest different footprints.
I’ve made a “combo” footprint that should accomodate both.
Agree. Anyway I almost only order assembled PCBs these days, JLCPCB is really affordable.
JLCPCB does 0201, standard only though
For available components, go to LCSC, filter for 0201 LEDs
and try the part number in the JLCPCB page.
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