Ian, if you read my message you'll find that we agree on all but one point.
You added some good information about ESD safety, but that wasn't the intent of the post. I was responding to a specific comment about someone "touching" an ESD mat to discharge oneself. As you know, that won't work. (Actually the person who wrote that knows that too. He's an experienced tech. It was just a poor choice of words.) But not everyone knows that. Indeed, a while back we had a thread started by people who decided they had defective "anti-static" mats because placing their DMM probes on them didn't show a low-resistance across the mat. That's not how static-dissipating mats work. You wrote "The wrist strap is not 'optional'" You can work without a wrist strap if you regularly touch a good ground to discharge yourself safely. That has the same effect as bleeding off the charge through a wrist strap. I and countless others have done it for decades and I'm sure that's why Wayne called for the "touch a ground" option to be included in the manuals. However, we're not saying to touch a ground once, but before every time you pick up a sensitive part, squirm in your seat, etc. The worker must keep a significant charge from accumulating on his/her body. Smart companies require wrist straps on the work benches because it's easy to forget to touch the ground. One zapped board buys a whole lot of wrist straps. When doing field repair we seldom have the luxury of anti-static mats, wrist straps, etc., but a little care in what we set the board on (not on cloth, etc.) and touching a ground before picking them up keeps the parts safe. Ron AC7AC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
