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Anti-static bag alternative?

P

paulboogie

Member
Sorry if this is slightly OT, but are there alternatives for anti-static bags? For shipping motherboard+processor and memory.
 
Anti-static bags are designed to protect against static build up, and transfer of static in from the outside.

Newspaper won't do. Neither will plastic bags.

The best thing is to use a proper anti-static bag. If you really do want to bodge it, then aluminimum foil is an excellent protector (but make damn sure there aren't any batteries on the device you are wrapping up - otherwise it will short out and you'll get some nice fireworks).

The aluminimum foil trick was told to me by an ex-military EE, who always used to keep his static sensitive parts in foil lined boxes.
 
Originally posted by: Mark R
Anti-static bags are designed to protect against static build up, and transfer of static in from the outside.

Newspaper won't do. Neither will plastic bags.

The best thing is to use a proper anti-static bag. If you really do want to bodge it, then aluminimum foil is an excellent protector (but make damn sure there aren't any batteries on the device you are wrapping up - otherwise it will short out and you'll get some nice fireworks).

The aluminimum foil trick was told to me by an ex-military EE, who always used to keep his static sensitive parts in foil lined boxes.
Click to expand...

I don't know if I would do this - what about the capacitors? Even if there are no batteries the caps could still hold a charge which would be conducted by the foil without any of the protective resistors and fuses built into the component...
 
I have used aluminum foil myself - use the heavy duty kind as the thin stuff will get ripped up by the "trees" on the bottom of the mobo or other cards. It works just fine. I doubt if there will be enough charge in mobo or card caps to bother the foil. Use the foil dull side toward the components/shiny side out. Put the aluminum wrapped item in a plastic bag to protect the foil. And remove any batteries prior to wrapping as mentioned above.

.bh.
 
The best replace for anti-static is shrink wrap the item and then wrap with aluminum foil on the outside. Or you can also use the newspaper on the inside and aluminum foil on the outside. The conductive material on the outside prevents static build up while the plastic on the inside insulates the unit.
 
I've purchased static-sensitive replacement semiconductors, ECG, NTE and others which came with the leads wrapped in aluminum foil for ESD protection. Some replacement semiconductors are packaged with the leads are imbedded in a small block of conductive foam, but aluminum foil works fine.
 
OP: How expensive can an anti-static bag be?

Originally posted by: Zepper
Never seen any material much more of a static generator than shrink-wrap...

.bh.
Click to expand...

Yeah to be honest that sounds like a really bad idea to me.
 
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