Resistance of ESD flooring

Thanks, i suppose we can quickly test to see if it is not an ESD floor by rubbing a balloon on it and seeing if it (the balloon) sticks to the wall afterwards?

Hi,

Treez - you produce mains connected electronics (for lighting).
Thus you should have a high voltage isolation meter, like Metriso.
With it you should be able to measure your floor resistance.

There will be standards where you can read how to do this.

Without knowing these standards...
I assume a some kind of meaningful method could be:
Use a 10cm x 10cm metal plate, with conductive foam between metal plate and floor, put a full bottle of water on it, and measure the resistance against protecting earth (water pipe, heating pipe) with the isolation meter.

I assume (hopefully) there is construction steel (mesh) inside the concrete, it should easily spread the ESD energy over a huge area.
At least it should form a relatively large capacitor.

Klaus

I think you are becoming a little paranoid Treez.

Normal ESD protection will cater for virtually every need. Someone leaving the room and re-entering will not be carrying lightning bolts, provided they didn't remove their grounding strap they will probably hold no charge whatsoever and anything residual will vanish almost instantly as they stand on the floor. Don't confuse the risks of conduction from a voltage source with static build up, they are quite different. The objective of ESD flooring is firstly to prevent the generation of static charge and secondly to discharge anything already present. The charges are normally very small and provided you are constantly discharging they will never reach danger level, either to equipment or personnel.

You also need to realize that in the UK, where humidity is generally high all year, it is actually quite difficult to build up a charge. I some regions (I lived and worked in the US mid-west) the air can be very dry and there really is a problem. In my experience of almost half a century in the industry, the biggest risks are from CRT screens and rapid air flows over synthetic surfaces, in particular vacuum operated test beds (bed of nails testers).

Brian.

Thanks,

These are our ESD floor tiles...
https://www.antistaticesd.co.uk/shop/anti-static-esd-mats/heavy-duty-esd-7mm-interlocking-tiles/
They have a resistance of 100 billion Ohms per metre squared.

I wonder if that would discharge anyone significantly? I wonder if a person could build up a charge while walking on this?

The black conductive ones are 100 Ohms/sq m, the dark grey are the high resistance dissipative ones. Which do you have?

Dissipative ones will prevent a charge building up but even 10^11 Ohms will discharge a typical body within a few minutes.

Brian.

The black conductive ones are 100 Ohms/sq m, the dark grey are the high resistance dissipative ones. Which do you have?

Click to expand...

Thanks, we have the grey one, the ones with 10^11 Ohms per square meter.