Heel Grounders are a specific type of shoe grounder that use a conductive black carbon rubber heel to ground the shoe.

Materials like wood and wool are also insulating. Walking up and down a wool carpet with tennis shoes can easily cause us to hold static on our skin and clothes.

When we go to handle electronics we want to make sure we are not electrically isolated, but instead electrically bonded (also known as “being grounded”). This allows those static electrons to discharge from our clothes and skin to the ground beneath our feet. Wearing a heel grounder connected to an electrically bonded floor or floor mat is a common way to “ground” large assembly lines.

The bonded surface can be a coated floor, an anti static mat roll laid out as “floor runner”, or a workstation floor mat.

Connected to the tire-grade rubber heel is a conductive silver thread that tucks into your sock. The thread draws static electricity from your skin’s surface so that it grounds you and the shoe as one unit.

The way this works is that as the heel grounders make contact with electrically bonded surfaces (mats or floors) the electricity that was static on your shoes and skin is dissipated- literally falls into the Earth under the force of gravity.