[Elecraft] ESD precautions?

[John A. Ross [RSDTV]]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vic Rosenthal [mailto:vic at rakefet.com] 
> Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 12:08 AM
> To: john at rsdtv.com
> Cc: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] ESD precautions?
> 
> John A. Ross [RSDTV] wrote:
> 
> > The possibility of ridding yourself of the beast in a hot, humid or 
> > possibly dusty environment, possibly with nearby HT sources 
> is pretty hard.
> 
> I thought high humidity was good, tending to short out static 
> charges...?

As well as being a discharge path it can also be a source, agitated particles suspended in air can
be just as bad a source (like manual moving of assembly pallets from bench>trolley>bench>assembly)
but other than following the path with a field meter to assess risk it is impossible to predict
friend or foe. 
Never worked in a ESD 'safe' environment where high humidity was encouraged (for other reasons as
well as ESD such as IC damage due to over exposure to humid areas or bad storage / bake and
suffering popcorn effects). 

If you give the beast multiple avenues of discharge then it becomes unpredictable. To tame the beast
you need to predict its behaviour and to have an environment where the discharge path in air is
possible compromised then IMO that's bad.

Could be good debate over a cold one though :-)

John (GM1BSG)