On May 14-16 the Northeast Chapter of the ESD Association is cosponsoring the following titled tutorials: – ESD Basics for the Program Manager – How To’s of In-Plant ESD Survey and Evaluation Measurements – Electrical Overstress (EOS) in Manufacturing and Test – Advanced ESD Measurements for CDM and Class 0 For more information and to…
Question: What does an ionizer do? Answer: The primary function of an ionizer is to neutralize electrostatic charges on insulators and isolated (non-grounded) conductors to reduce the magnitude of electrostatic discharges in the ESD protected area. Point-of-use compressed air ionizers combat electrostatic attraction neutralizing charges on particles causing contamination or visual defects on products. Question:…
Relative humidity (RH) directly affects the ability of a surface to store an electrostatic charge. As RH increase, the time a surface will hold a charge will decrease and the dissipation rate will increase. As the RH increases, so does the natural conductivity of the air, but even at 100% RH the increase in the…
The ESD Association provided a recent article for Printed Circuit Design and FAB called titled “The Simple Solution”. To read the entire article, click HERE. The article is a good discussion regarding the importance of measuring in ESD Control situations. Any good ESD Control Plan requires different measuring devices to determine the need for and effectiveness…
Regular cleaning of an ionizer’s emitter pins is necessary to stay within the ionizer’s required limits of ANSI/ESD S20.20. If the ionizer has a filter, it should be cleaned at this time as well. One S20.20 required limit for ionizers is Offset Voltage of less than + or – 50 volts (this is often referred…
ANSI/ESD S20.20 has three garment categories with the following names and required limits: Category 1 – Static Control Garment < 1 x 1011 ohms Category 2 – Groundable Static Control Garment < 1 x 109 ohms Category 3 – Groundable Static Control Garment System < 3.5 x 107 ohms The primary purpose of a smock…
Surface Resistance Test Kit OTHER CONSIDERATIONS Discipline A significant increase in the discipline of implementing the fundamentals of ESD control noted in ANSI/ESD S20.20 Foreword, calls for: Ground all conductors in the EPA including people Remove all insulators from the EPA or use ionizers for process necessary insulators Package ESD sensitive items going outside the…
Antistatic is the ESD control property properly referred to as “low charging”. This is an important property for all bags used inside or outside of an ESD protected area (EPA). Specifically, it is important that the inside of the bag be low charging, so when the ESD Sensitive Device is inserted into the bag or…
Read more What is the exact difference between antistatic bags and dissipative bags?
By Fred Tenzer There are essentially two types of technologies used for monitoring operator wrist straps: Single-Wire Impedance or Dual-Wire Resistance Monitors. Both technologies monitor the function of an operator’s wrist strap, but it is important to understand how these technologies work and the shortcomings of each. Here is some basic historical information on the…
Read more Fred Tenzer on Continuous Monitor History and Preference
We posted this back in May 2012, and we noticed the video has gone viral recently with major news channels like CBS news. People do not start feeling charges from an ESD event until the discharge is at least 2000 volts while many common components used for manufacturing of electronics are susceptible to 100 volts or less . …