Desco offers a wide product offering of Ionizers: bench top, overhead, and point-of use. Desco products incorporate superior technology providing fast discharge times, and such features as auto balancing feedback controls and “clean me” alarms. The primary function of an ionizer is to neutralize electrostatic charges on insulators and isolated (non-grounded) conductors to reduce the…
The Made by Monkeys blog on the Design News website recently posted an article called ZAP! Another ESD Casualty about an electrical engineer’s experiences with electrostatic discharge (ESD). The article offers a perspective on ESD control from “then” compared to now. Not much has changed. ESD is a natural occurring event that can damage ESD…
An article titled ESD Standards: An Annual Progress Report appears in the current issue of Printed Circuit Design and Fab. The article written by ESD Association and details the importance of standards in the manufacturing of electronics. It also discusses how the ESD Association creates and maintains the standards. The article goes on to state:…
A good article was published on the Circuits Assembly website recently. The article was written by the ESD Association and is titled Managing Your ESD Program. The article discusses the challenges manufactures face in designing and maintaining an ESD control program for their operations. The article goes on to breakdown managing an ESD program in…
Originally Published by InCompliance Magazine- September 2012 Now is the Time for ESD Control Programs to be Improved “Factory ESD control is expected to play an ever-increasing critical role as the industry is flooded with even more HBM (Human Body Model) and CDM (Charged Device Model) sensitive designs.” By Fred Tenzer and Gene Felder ElectroStatic Discharge…
Read more Now is the Time for ESD Control Programs to be Improved
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…