In ANSI/ESD S20.20 Section 8.2 (Personnel Grounding), recommended requirements are outlined for how personnel should be electrically connected to a grounding system with a wrist strap. S20.20 also includes recommendations for “ESD Control items” (i.e., esd mats and wrist straps) in Section 8.3 ESD Protected Areas (EPAs).
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Sometimes there’s confusion about how ESD mats work and where they should be used. In professional ESD control programs, mats are selected and evaluated for their intended application in accordance with ESD Association standards.
For worksurfaces (benches, carts, shelves), use ANSI/ESD S4.1 criteria and test methods (e.g., resistance to groundable point and point-to-point). For floors/floor mats, use ANSI/ESD S7.1 for flooring material performance—and when the mat is part of a footwear/floor grounding system, evaluate it using the footwear + floor system test methods (and verify in the program per TR53).
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ESD Smock testing procedure requires the fabric to be measured as “static dissipative” on the Ohms scale and to be grounded (bonded electrically to a grounding system) so that it is not an isolated floating conductor. In this article, we review how ANSI / ESD S20.20-2021 defines ESD Smocks and explain the “isolated floating conductor” issue with wearing ESD clothing.
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ESD Smocks present a conductive, static shielding barrier between electrostatic discharges (ESD) emanating from your body and any electronics that you may be near.
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Have you ever wondered how to ground an
