In EPA areas the staff’s behavior is important, but also the clothing used is important, which must be in accordance with the basic rules in order to avoid the release of electrostatic discharges and damage the electronic components.
Therefore, the department staff is generally equipped with a series of antistatic clothing, made with approved fabrics, which avoids the formation of static charges. The ideal protection for a person who works sitting at a workplace is composed of:
Shoes
In some workstations such as in warehouses and in production, conductive shoes or grounding heel covers are used which must be worn on both feet in order to ensure contact with the floor or with the carpet, they do not work correctly if used on surfaces insulators.
Gowns
A high-necked apron, with long sleeves closed on the wrist in order to prevent other types of clothing from leaking out from the sleeve of the apron itself.
Thanks to them it is possible to suffocate the electrostatic fields created by the operator’s clothes. The conductive fibers immersed in the fabric form a Faraday’s cage that blocks the electrostatic fields preventing them from propagating outside going to damage the components. For this to happen the lab coat must be made of conductive material.
Gloves
Often some sensitive components are damaged due to electrostatic discharges even if the operator is connected to the ground. To slow down the path of the current to the ground, it is useful to check the discharge speed and a good system to achieve this is to wear static dissipative finger covers and gloves.
Bracelets
They are the most used device to effectively dissipate operator charges and we will better explain how it works in one of the next articles.
Walking test
Generally, before working in the EPA area and in order to ensure that antistatic protective clothing works properly, the “walking test” is performed. This test allows to check the charge levels on the human body. To choose the correct floor, you must both measure the resistance to the ground and carry out the walkway test to analyze the loadability of the human body. This test is performed by generating voltage on the operator due to triboelectric effect. The operator, holding a metal electrode, transfers the force of the charges to an electrostatic voltmeter, which is measured in volts
In this way, the suitability of a coating is checked. However, keep in mind that all anti-static protection means are ineffective if they are not accompanied by a correct way of behaving and operating of the staff, who must necessarily be educated and be aware of the damage that can result from the lack of attention to static electricity problems.
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