5 ms·

What’s up with not using an electrostatic mat and wrist bracelet to prevent discharging onto the electronics?

• vinyl7 5y ago
  In my experience of having touched components and had static discharge, modern components (at least on PCs) are designed to handle it. I worked for a systems builder and none of the assemblers used grounding straps and had no issues. It seems like they have something in the traces to protect the critical components from static, probably to reduce RMAs from custom builders. That's not to say it can't happen though.
  • brian_cunnie 5y ago
    I think static straps are important. I used to work at a fabless semiconductor company, Aeluros (bought by Broadcom) in 2002-2007, and one of our analog designers, Arnold Feldman, Ph.D., who designed anti-static circuitry for a large graphics card mfr, religiously wore anti-static straps when he was in the lab. In fact, all the designers (they were all Ph.D.s from either Stanford or Cal) wore straps in the lab. I asked him once why he wore a strap because until that company I had been haphazard in my use of a strap when I worked on the guts of PCs. He said that even though I might not have caused a failure, the chip might be degraded. I now wear a strap every time I work with bare circuit boards.
    • pokstad 5y ago
      Yup, degradation is the silent killer. It may work this time, but maybe a few months or years down the road it will suddenly fail.
    • vxNsr 5y ago
      This is fascinating, I didn’t know this was a thing. I always ignored the static strap, based on what I’d heard/seen that it was no longer strictly necessary.