Anti-static wrist band - what should I attach it to ?

[wearetheborg]

I'm getting an antistatic wrist band. Its supposed to be atached to "unpainted laptop surface", unfortnately, I dont think my laptop has one.
Can I attach the alligator clip to a metal utensil ?

 

[Brainonska511]

Do you really need to use one? I'd just touch a piece of metal not attached to the laptop and then touch the outside of the laptop (such as a metal grate) before working on the inside.

 

[wearetheborg]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511
Do you really need to use one? I'd just touch a piece of metal not attached to the laptop and then touch the outside of the laptop (such as a metal grate) before working on the inside.

Touching a metal uetnsi has been my protocol too, but these bands are so cheap, I figured it could not hurt to use them.

 

[Gibson486]

The one time I killed a board with esd is when i was wearing one of those bands.

 

[wearetheborg]

I got one of these, similar to
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...Item&item=300149064802

The problem is, the banana plug doesnt seem to fit into my ground outlets. The directions say to plug it into the round ground hole, but all my ground holes are square, and too big for the banana jack.

 

[MDE]

Don't bother with it. Just touch a piece of grounded metal (something like a PC case or the screw on an electrical wall plate) before you start working on the computer and you'll be fine.

 

[Rottie]

I put my antistatic wrist band to car battery and it works like a charm. :laugh:

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: Gibson486
The one time I killed a board with esd is when i was wearing one of those bands.

Heh! Exactly...

Current goes BOTH ways, you know?

OP: How do you know whatever you're grounding yourself to, doesn't have more potential than your ungrounded fingers?

That is, what if the 'utensil' that you're connecting yourself to has more of a charge than your body?

If it was me, I'd forget about it!

I digress: I'm a ham operator and conventional logic states that ALL ham equipment should be grounded. So, one day I drove a 10' copper rod in the ground, outside my 'radio shack', hooked all my equipment to junction blocks and grounded them to the rod.

About a month later, there was a lightning storm around my house. I disconnected all my equipment from the power source, antennas, et cetera, but left my ground in place.

After the storm, all my equipment was dead! One of the radios had 7 fuses in it, and they were all blown big time (looked like black spray paint inside the glass tubes)!

The on/off switch was burned up in one of my amps, yada, yada, yada...

As it turned out, we figured that a lightning bolt must have traveled up the ground wire into my equipment. Kapeesh?

On topic: Are you getting my drift?

What happens if your 'ground' is charged with voltage and you connect it to your computer, via this strap?

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Wouldn't just grabbing all the prongs on the (unplugged) power cord be the best and safest way to ground yourself to the PC?

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Gonad the Barbarian
Wouldn't just grabbing all the prongs on the (unplugged) power cord be the best and safest way to ground yourself to the PC?

You don't want to ground yourself to the PC, you want to ground yourself to ground. It takes something like 300V of electricty for a human to feel a static discharge. So when you shuffle your feet and touch a door knob, that is actually a lot of volts, just next to no amps. However, it only takes something on the order of .3V (or perhaps less) to critically damage some of the components in a computer. So you won't be able to feel it if you kill it.

A further piece of advice would be to leave the power supply plugged into the wall, but flip it's switch to 'off'. Then, once you ground yourself you can feel a little bit safer about working in the system.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

If you ground yourself to the ground, and for whatever reason your PC isn't grounded well to the ground, there's still a chance for a net charge & transfer. If you share the same net charge as the PC then no transfer, regardless of what that might be to actual ground. I still think it's a better idea to ground yourself to the PC then to try to ground both to actual ground, and I can't think of a better way to do that than by just grabbing the outlet prongs.

 

[VinDSL]

LoL!

I see a new lappy in wearetheborg's future - and a good 'campfire story'...

 

[wearetheborg]

I'm so confused

 

[VinDSL]

Go ahead and use your anti-static wrist band, bro!

We're just pulling your leg...