There used to be a local component retailer (those were the days) who sold
to amateurs. He was often asked about the effects of ESD when folks observed
the precautions he took when decanted CMOS onto condictive foam, or wrapped
it in foil.
When asked he would un-earth himself, remove the CMOS chips from his Iambic
Keyer and rub them on his jumper or shirt and generally mis-handle them. He
would then re-insert them in the keyer and demonstrate that it still worked.
He then told the buyer not to try that at home and to follow the necessary
precautions but with confidence. He did this many times and the keyer always
worked afterwards, and he tells me he never had to replace the chips. I
think they were "A" series CMOS which are pretty static sensitive.
Now I do live in Manchester England which was a cotton spinning town because
of the damp atmosphere so its hard to get a real good zap going, but I do
think if you take reasonable care your are very ulikley to blow a modern
device with static.
Dave.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Trethan
> Sent: 24 December 2011 08:49
> To: Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Homebrew_PCBs] PCB holder
>
>
> What's wrong with staying realistic about risk?
>
> We could do all sorts of things safer - say reduce traffic deaths to
> almost zero by driving no faster than 20mph, and yet we do not do it.
> Here no lifes are at risk - just $1 components, why let yourself be
> slowed down with ESD measures?
>
> Having used only minimal ESD precautions all my life and never seen a
> failure, and frequently testing designs with ESD guns gives me some
> confidence that there is a certain amount of unwarranted hype
> associated with this topic.
>
> Would you care to elaborate using specific examples of how you damaged
> components with ESD?
> For some reason peope never can back their fear up with specific
> incidents when I prompt them. The examples should _not_ involve either
> a huge production quantity (where the statistics get you), or very
> early CMOS components (which were much more sensitive).
>
>
>
>
> This is similar to the temperature when soldering issue. There are old
> books and stuff that suggest clamping heatsink tweezers onto
> semiconductors while soldering, and generally put the fear of god into
> beginners. When they ask for advise I have to first disabuse them of
> the notion that components will just blow up as soon as they get
> slightly warm. Modern components can withstand soldering heat to an
> amazing degree.
>
> It is not helpful to overrate risk, it just puts people off when they
> really should be getting stuck into some hands on experience. I let
> the magic smoke out so many times with stupid mistakes, why worry
> about one or two components that may or may not have been damaged by
> ESD?
>
> ST
>
> On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Boman33 <boman33@...> wrote:
> > You might be lucky but do not spread bad info.
> >
> > Bertho
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Stefan Trethan Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2011 02:28
> >
> >
> >
> > 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.
> > ---<snip
> >
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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