Electrostatic charges and discharges in electronics manufacturing can damage components, leading to unnecessary scrap. Special floors can prevent this - and can also be installed ever more economically.
Electrostatic charges and discharges occur almost everywhere in everyday life - e.g. when working at a desk, walking across a carpet, picking up a plastic bag. Even brief contact between two bodies creates an electrostatic charge, which can discharge very quickly if necessary when the charge is separated. In particular, areas where sensitive electrical equipment is located, such as production machines for processing highly sensitive microelectronic components through to servers, must be protected from electrostatic charging and discharging, as these can otherwise be seriously damaged. Often, even the smallest discharges are sufficient to cause malfunctions or complete failure of the components. However, these often only occur when the end product is in use. Cost-intensive failures or recalls are then the result.
To avoid this, there are various measures that prevent electrostatic charges. One is the use of wrist grounding straps. With these straps, which are attached to the wrist, one is directly connected to the earth, but not restricted in one's freedom of movement. This prevents the person wearing the strap from becoming electrostatically charged.
On the other hand, special packaging is also used so that the sensitive components are protected.
Another solution is to provide conductive flooring in such sensitive areas so that the electrical charge can be dissipated into the ground. Electronically sensitive components (ESDS) and machinery are thus not exposed to this hazard. These floors can be in the form of mats or even synthetic resin.
"The conductive floor coatings must be highly resilient and easy to maintain, depending on the requirements, e.g. crack-bridging or slip-resistant, and must also be quick and thus economical to install."
Fig. 1: General system structure (Fig.: WN8540284 – stock.adobe.com)
Today, a wide range of special synthetic resin floors is available, on the basis of which Remmers realizes individual system solutions for the respective application. A major advantage of synthetic resin floors is that they can be laid without joints and that the floor can be given an individual color design, coupled with the possibility of being able to adapt the above-mentioned requirements individually to the project (Fig. 1). This ranges from a simple sealing system to a thick-layer flow coating system. New for the ESD area are an ESD-capable hard-grain coating and an ESD-capable textured coating. Thanks to the use of the latest technologies, these floors no longer require cross-conductive layers. This can save a full day of floor installation, increasing profitability and minimizing downtime. In addition, both products bring good mechanical and chemical resistance as well as a defined slip resistance class. All in all, the problem of electrostatic charging and discharging through floors can now be safely tackled with a wide range of special flooring solutions.
Fig. 1: General system structure (Fig.: WN8540284 – stock.adobe.com)
