Come on people, stay realistic.
Steve is most likely not going to make assemblies for an aircraft or
anything like that.
Nor is he going to run thousands of boards a day from his homemade PCB holder.
In a typical home shop or even development lab setting you'll not
notice the effects of ESD measures - there just aren't any failures
even if you take no measures at all.
Modern components are much more rugged than say early cmos ICs. You
can store them in Styrofoam if you like and will in all probability
never see a failure from this.
Let me compare the ESD situation to something suitable for the season
- ice on the ground. You know when you walk outside there can be ice,
you can slip and break something, yet most people don't wear crampons.
Why not? Because the risk does not warrant the effort for most
situations. It does sometimes - that's why crampons exist. The ESD
gear manufacturers of course try to sell you crampons and a full set
of knee and elbow protectors and a helmet while they are at it - and
they don't even lie, you are safer that way.
Just weigh the risk before you go shopping, is all I say. If you are
not working on very many very expensive very sensitive components you
may not want to even bother.
ST
On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 2:32 AM, Dwayne Reid <dwayner@...> wrote:
> At 05:41 PM 12/23/2011, Steve wrote:
>>Thanks everyone for the thoughts regarding the polyethylene/nylon PCB
>>holder and the ramifications regarding damage to ESD sensitive devices.
>>I think I'm going to pass on this particular holder.
>>
>>One of the responses mentioned the use of the Panavise PCB holder. The
>>Panavise in my case would be sitting on an ESD mat and I'd be using a
>>grounding strap. Is that a viable environment for working with PCB's
>>that use ESD sensitive devices?
>
> Yep.
>
> Our workbenches are covered with a static-dissipative surface which
> is extremely durable. We check the surface resistivity yearly and
> have found no degradation over the past 15 or 20 years. There was
> some initial degradation over the first couple of years but the
> manufacturer assured us that was normal. Looks like they were right
> - the surface resistivity has remained essentially unchanged since
> that initial period.
>
> I don't wear a wrist-strap. Instead, I wear static-dissipative shoes
> and stand on an ESD mat. Side note - you have NO idea how hard it
> was to find the combination of slip-on shoes with safety-rated steel
> toes and static-dissipative. But find them I did - J B Goodhue
> 'Officer' series shoes. Get them at <www.shuzonline.com> .
>
> You don't need to be scared of ESD - it truly is easily managed. The
> important thing to remember is to keep everything that you are
> working on at the same potential. In general, that means touching a
> ground point on anything that you are going to poke around
> inside. Similarly, if you are going to hand a static-sensitive
> device to another person, make sure that you touch that person first
> before handing over the device.
>
> When you walk up to your workbench, touch a ground point before
> touching anything on the bench. The whole idea is to eliminate
> voltage differences between you and anything that you touch.
>
> dwayne
>
> --
> Dwayne Reid <dwayner@...>
> Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA
> (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax
> www.trinity-electronics.com
> Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing
>
>
>
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