ESD Safe – Electrostatic Discharge Safety

What is ESD?

ESD stands for electrostatic discharge. ESD can be defined as transfer of electric charge between two different objects charged to different electric potentials. This happens when the two object are brought in contact with each other. Electrostatic Discharge can also happen when two objects with different electric potentials due to static induction are brought together either intentionally or unintentionally.

Dangers of ESD

Electrostatic Discharge can cause damage / defects to electronic products, electronic components mainly SMD components and failure of PCB and equipment that can lead to further damage and accident. Damage while mobile phone repairing is very common because of ESD.

How to Protect / Control ESD?

ESD can be protected with following simple precautions:

• While repairing PCB or electronic equipment, wear a grounded antistatic wrist strap to ground the worker.

• Lay ESD-safe mat on table or work bench and ground it.

• Remove all static producing materials from the area.

• Use ESD-Safe tools and equipment.

• Use ionizers (static eliminator) for ionization (charge mitigating) to neutralize the charge where grounding is not possible.

• Use antistatic bags for packaging PCB when transporting or storage.