Checking your ESD Control Products - Part 2

Today's post concludes our 2-part series on periodic verifcation. If you have missed the first part, you can catch-up on it here. As a reminder, it is recommended to regularely check all ESD Protected Area (EPA) products to ensure they are working correctly. After covering working surface matting and wrist straps in last week's post, we'll jump right in to discuss the remaining components in your EPA.

Floor Matting

A flooring / footwear system is an alternative for personnel grounding for standing or mobile workers. Foot grounders quickly and effectively drain the static charges which collect on personnel during normal, everyday activities. Foot grounders should be used in conjunction with floor surfaces which have a surface resistance of less than 10¹⁰ ohms.
As ESD floors get dirty, their resistance increases. For optimum electrical performance, floor matting must be cleaned regularly using an ESD mat cleaner, such as Reztore™ Surface & Mat Cleaner. Do not use cleaners with silicone as silicone build-up will create an insulative film on the surface. Dissipative floor finish can be used to reduce floor resistance. Periodic verification will identify how often the floor finish needs to be applied. As the layer(s) of dissipative floor finish wear, the resistance measurements will increase. So, after some amount of data collection, a cost effective maintenance schedule can be established.

Testing floor matting

Floor matting can be checked using a resistance meter. Surface resistance meters are designed to measure resistance point-to-point (Rp-p) or surface to ground (Rg) in accordance with EN 61340-5-1 Electrostatics and its test method IEC 61340-2-3.

Footwear

ESD Shoes or Foot Grounders play an essential part in the flooring/footwear system. For more information on how to ground moving personnel effectively, check this post. Before handling ESD sensitive devices, visually inspect your ESD footwear for any damage. Just like wrist straps, footwear should be checked while being worn using a wrist strap/footwear tester.

Checking foot grounders using 877-2488

Records of each test should be kept. Analysis and corrective action should take place when a footwear tester indicates a failure. Footwear needs to be checked daily.

ESD Packaging

Re-using shielding bags is acceptable as long as there is no damage to the shielding layer. Shielding bags with holes, tears or excessive wrinkles should be discarded.

Make sure your ESD shielding bags are un-damaged

It is up to the user to determine if a shielding bag is suitable for re-use or not. The testing of every bag before re-use is not practical. Many companies will discard the shielding bag once used and replace it with a new one. Others will use a system of labels to identify when the bag has gone through five handling cycles:

• Non-reusable labels are used that require the label be broken to open the bag.
• The bag is then resealed with a new label.
• When there are five broken labels, the bag is discarded.

The same principle applies to other ESD packaging, e.g. component shippers.

Ionisers

Ionisers are intended to neutralise static charges on insulators thereby reducing their potential to cause ESD damage. However, poorly maintained ionisers with dirty emitter pins and out-of-balance ionisers can put a charge on ungrounded items. Remember to clean ioniser emitter pins and filters regularly. You can now even purchase ionisers that will alarm when emitter pins need to be cleaned or the ioniser is out of balance.

Checking ionisers using 776-8324

The EMIT Ionisation Test Kit 776-8324 allows the Digital Static Field Meter to be used to measure the offset voltage (balance) and charge decay of ionisation equipment. The Test Kit also includes a Charger used to place a ±1000V charge on the Conductive Plate, making it possible to measure the discharge times of air ionisation equipment per ANSI/ESD SP3.3 Periodic Verification of Air Ionizers.

Wrist Strap/Footwear and Resistance Testers etc.

So you check your wrist straps and/or footwear and bench and/or floor matting regularly. But have you remembered the testers themselves? What good do all the checks do, if the testers you use are out-of-spec and show you incorrect results? Yearly calibration is recommended – many manufacturers offer a calibration service or alternatively you can purchase calibration units from them and perform the calibration yourself.  

So there you have it - a list of the most commonly used products in your ESD Protected Area (EPA) that you should check on a regular basis.
Questions for you: Do you have a verfication plan in place? If so, how often do you check your ESD protection products?