Anyone wear their grounding strap any more?

[Diggs]

The title pretty well says it. I used to be religious about wearing a grounded wrist strap on just about all desktop repairs. As the years have gone by I used the strap less and less to the point that I haven't put on on in the last couple of years even during a new build. Anyone still use one? Anyone had bad things happen because they didn't wear one? What's the current (pun intended?) state of things?

....on a related note, I keep bags of old memory. DDR2 desktop, DDR2 laptop, DDR3 desktop, etc. I throw sticks in the bag as I retire old machines and reach in for a hand full when I need a stick or two. In my early days this would be heresy. You just didn't treat memory sticks this way due to static and grounding issues. Yet, I've never had memory "out of the bag" fail or be suspect. It's memory in a machine working that always seems to fail. Hmm.....

 

[britechguy]

I think I wore a grounding strap perhaps twice.

I've never static fried anything over decades. And I agree about the non-fragility of memory in general. I've pulled sticks out of drawers, bags, bins, etc., and never had one be DOA.

 

[Kitten Kong]

I've never wore a strap, have had only 1 issue.

That was many years ago, after I had carpal tunnel surgery.

For a couple of weeks after having the surgery, ANYTHING I touched, there was a 75% chance of me on the receiving end of a static shock!.

I blew a client's motherboard, psu and ram.

Bit of an expensive repair at the time.

Worse was my client was stood next to me as I was replacing his psu!.

 

[Markverhyden]

I've never worn a ESD strap on a regular basis. That being said if a customer specifies it I will, I'm not one for being the tail that wags the dog. For example Apple requires it when working on their BoH servers in their stores.

My introduction to electronics dates back to the '70's when I was working on drilling rigs with all kinds of electronic sensors, computers were 8008's, then PDP-11's, then MicroVAX's. I can remember having conversations with EE's, both design and manufacturing, about ESD since that was always such a prominent part of handling electronics in those days. They said all of what were used were MilSpec components which had much higher tolerances than non-MilSpec. The opinion of several is that the distinction between MilSpec and non will slowly go away as more electronics are needed for DoD applications and it becomes cheaper and easier to manufacture to just one standard.

But it's still a real thing. So I'll always make sure a device has been powered down for at least a minute or two with the cord plugged in to insure discharge. I'll touch the chassis before getting to components.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I live in a very hot, and very dry environment. Toss in the dust in the air and I'm a walking talking static generator most of the time.

That being said, I've NEVER once in my life worn an ESD strap for any other reason that curiosity... once. I've never actually worked on anything with one on my person.

What I do however, is make sure I make physical contact with a grounded surface and MAINTAIN that contact as much as possible while working with sensitive components such as RAM. I've never killed anything...

Now, I have made a ton of machines reboot plugging in thumb drives... that jolt to the USB bus causes resets on many mainboards. Which is also something that users do on a regular basis out here.

 

[Stever]

Electroboom and Linus have a video on how difficult it is to zap something

I have wool carpets and wear anti static footwear, the footwear is conductive enough to discharge any static.
Check out the specs of your workwear footwear, most list how antistatic they are, yes you should be wearing safety footwear incase you drop a tower on your foot !

 

[GTP]

Adelaide is a hot/dry environment.
I have them but never use them. In over 20 years I've never had a problem.

 

[NJW]

I think probably the last thing I destroyed with body-borne static was a CMOS chip in the mid-1980s. This earned me a bollocking from my line manager (British military situation, where ESD mitigation was 'mandatory').

I suppose modern MOSFETs are vulnerable on the gate, but nowadays, they're so small that you'd be hard-pressed to contact the gate pin (out of circuit) independently of the drain and source. I know that some MOSFETs include built-in Zener protection against gate oxide layer damage and that may well be true for other sensitive devices. It's cheap to sprinkle a few extra diodes around a piece of silicon, these days.

 

[Fred Claus]

I've never worn one either. When I sit down to work on a computer I just touch something else first. If I don't get shocked, then I won't give a shock to the computer. At least that's my thought on it.

 

[britechguy]

This is one of those things that has been unnecessary, in my opinion, for as long as I've been working on PCs (I didn't start out doing this).

Grounding straps are an anachronism demanded by the fussy that serve no meaningful purpose in actual practice. There are other ways of destroying things that are more likely to occur than the stray static discharge if you exercise even the slightest bit of caution.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Nope.
Precautions..I'll touch the chassis..and keep a hand on the chassis when reaching for sensitive parts.

 

[Mike McCall]

Used to work on high-voltage valve audio gear. One learns very quickly where not to put your fingers! Learned to rest the arm of the hand in the gear on the chassis so any voltage discharge went to ground as directly as possible. NEVER ground yourself with the opposite hand as the voltage would then pass through your heart on its way to ground. Not a good thing. Those same practices have served me well over several decades.

 

[DRPCNZ]

Had to wear one for every job as an HP Onsite Tech, and use to always wear them when the Off/On was an actual 240V switch and also left he power cable plugged into the wall. Stopped wearing one about the same time the 240V switch as replaced by a toggle switch

 

[NJW]

Used to work on high-voltage valve audio gear.

In those far-off days (for me), benches and floors had rubber insulating matting and if you worked on a live chassis, one hand was in your pocket, out of the way. Of course, any discharge would be in the other direction, and far from static.

CRTs (radar displays) were tricky, even after an hour or so with a discharge stick attached to the anode nipple.

 

[DRPCNZ]

CRTs (radar displays) were tricky, even after an hour or so with a discharge stick attached to the anode nipple.

Yep CRT ALWAYS one hand n the pocket with them

 

[Markverhyden]

In those far-off days (for me), benches and floors had rubber insulating matting and if you worked on a live chassis, one hand was in your pocket, out of the way. Of course, any discharge would be in the other direction, and far from static.

CRTs (radar displays) were tricky, even after an hour or so with a discharge stick attached to the anode nipple.

My first experience repairing anything with a CRT was Apple's G3 AIO's. All over the educational world back in the day. The other tech told me to first crack them all open to get them discharged, don't believe it happens in a few seconds. It was easy to build a discharge rig so I carried some extra screw drivers and heavy duty wire with alligator clips.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Ahh the good old days when you learned the hard way why that huge capacitor on the back of a CRT was nick named "throw back".

That thing put me into a wall once... it's been almost 30 years now and we still don't know where that screwdriver went!

 

[gadgetfixup]

Ahh the good old days when you learned the hard way why that huge capacitor on the back of a CRT was nick named "throw back".

That thing put me into a wall once... it's been almost 30 years now and we still don't know where that screwdriver went!

Flyback

I still rebuild small power supplies for some devices. Open a PS4 power supply and touch bottom of the board with traces to the 2 long capacitors and you'll see dots for a while. Even when discharging those with a screwdriver I still jump

 

[TechLady]

Nope. My hair is a pretty good indicator as to whether that's going to be a problem

 

[Markverhyden]

Lessons learned the hard way last.

Back when I was a kid one of my chores around grandma's house was dusting her enormous ancient tv. Now matter what wonderful Mr.Shine said on the can, the screen was always covered in dust.
I wondered how strong the static could be, like it was only dust and i'd already stuck a balloon to the ceiling, so held a sheet of newspaper against the screen and turned off the set.
Success! Turned on the set and the page fell off. Cool. What else could I try? Bacofoil as igured that wouldn't work as it's metal so obvs it conducts = not static. Tore off a big sheet and covered the entire screen. It stuck okay, but didn't fall off. Now grandma can't watch her tv.
I grabbed the corner of the sheet to pull it off and earthed the foil...it was quite a shock!

My first real experience with real electricity, as in AC, was when I was 12-13. Fortunately as an observer but it still made a lasting impression. I and some friends worked for the school Thespian Society building sets for plays. I was mainly carpentry while Jeff did the electrical. He was doing some wiring for lights for a set wall. Someone else said they had unplugged the wire but really hadn't. He had some really large wire cutters. I'd guess the head was a good 3-4". Was a huge flash and bang when he cut through the wire, totally melted the cutters and knocked him back about ten feet. Fortunately the handles were well insulated. Poor Jeff had the shakes for a couple of hours.