[Elecraft] Antistatic Silicon Mat?

[Don Wilhelm]

An antistatic mat 'worth its salt' will have a ground connection and the 
distributed conductance of the mat material provides safety from the 
direct ground.
Yes, wrist straps are different, they have a large resistor (about 1 
megohms) in series with the ground connection.  Mine connect to a 
'button' on the rear corner of the mat.

I have a quality mat covering much of my workbench as well as a wrist 
strap.  My commonly used tools rest on the mat as well as the radio 
being worked on.  Other less commonly used tools do not live on the mat 
but are brought into contact with the mat for a bit of time before 
touching them to any internal part of the radio.

I believe these are good antistatic work practices.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 1/12/2018 3:23 PM, SteveL wrote:
> Also, I believe ESD wrist straps should have something like a 1 meg ohm resistor in the ground connection to mitigate direct (and potentially fatal) shock to ground while allowing the bleed off static charge.  A direct connection to ground is hazardous!
> 
> Steve
> aa8af
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jan 12, 2018, at 1:19 PM, Dale Chayes <dale at ldeo.columbia.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Whatever you buy, don’t forget (the obvious, but often overlooked):
>> - at least one wrist strap
>> - and you have to ground the mat
>>
> 
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