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Whats the best way to ESD damage a PCB

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treez

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Hi,
We have an SMD PCB for lighting...and we wish to ESD damage it....how may we best do this....i rubbed one over carpets and ran up and down stairs with it in my hand, and held it while i madly scraped my shoes over a carpet, but it still works fine....how may i assure ESD damage?...it has DPAK FETs on it and SOT23 FETS, and a 6x6mm micro (pic16f18856) so plenty of things which dont like ESD.
 

Semiconductors are very prone to destruction whilst operating. Power your PCB and expose it to a large van de graaff generator, You can also retry your methods when its powered. Alternately you can expose it to an electrostatic field using these **broken link removed** I had several and they work well. The board might be coated which would require higher voltage to damage it regardless if its powered.
 
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it also depends on the humidity in the air
this time of year, north america, europe etc have relatively high humidity and
static charge does not build up

if you did the carpet shuffle, or the sox in the clothes dryer during winter,
it may damage the board

but not during summer
 

Hi,

"... over carpets and ran up and down stairs with it in my hand,..."
..may cause the whole circuit to be voltage shifted w.r.t EARTH GND, but it does not necessarily mean there is a big voltage difference within the PCB...nor does it mean there is ESD discharge current across PCB mounted parts.
--> no current, no damage

You need
* the PCB to be EARTH grounded
* and you need a high voltage source ( maybe yourself ... after walking across a capet)
* then you need to touch an electronic part in a way that a spark happens...and the resulting current travels across an electronic part..then back to EARTH ground.

Klaus
 

Most of the components are sensitive (to ESD) before they are put in place. Once they are in the board, they are interconnected and are far more resistant to ESD.

Running up and down the stairs will keep you fit and do little to the PCB.

Try to hold the PCB at one end and put the other end to an earthed line so that you can see a small spark.

Still, satisfaction not guaranteed.
 

Just what are you looking to achieve by all of this random
abuse? A random failure signature?

Looking for in-production ESD damage or post-consumer-
sale ESD damage?

Certain that ESD is your pony, and not some other EOS?
 

The answer depends on the ESD you want to use. A human static discharge model is quite simple and well documented. If you are trying to quantify the destruction/damage/disruption vulnerability you need to think hard. Running around with a board in your hand just charges you and the board to the same potential so no harm will come to it. You would get exactly the same static charge if you placed it in an anti-static bag beforehand.

I would suggest if you don't want to get into the expense and realms of electrostatic field mapping, that you place the board on a conductive sheet (Al foil for example) connect the foil to a high voltage generator (a small arc generator ~5 - 10KV) and the other side of the generator to a probe through a suitable current limiting resistor. It should be enough to produce a short spark of up to 5mm when the probe is placed near the board. You can make a simple HV generator with a small mains isolating transformer and a multi-stage voltage multiplier for very little cost. Research 'ion generator', Google throws up over 56 million references.

Brian.
 

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