Robin Hoods Playground

Warning you are about to get a lesson on Static Electricity from a Computer and Electronics Engineer.

Static electricity builds up on the body when there is a difference in grounds between the body and the earth's natural ground. Static electicity can build very fast and greatly up to 45,000 Volts. And considering current is what kills most people there is obviously very little current built up in Static Electricity. Now how this affects electronic boards and such. A integrated circuit like the ana/Hana chip will be destroyed by less than 30Volts. On average any given person can carry as much as 7 to 8 thousand volts without ever knowing it. That's 267 times the voltage need to destroy any chip available. The next time you feel a static electric discharge you can bet that there is at least 3000 volts in that charge. And the next time you see a static electric discharge that there is at least 5500 volts in that one. So think about the next time you open your 360.
This is the perfect example of static electricity.

very nice.
also... some people say wearing anit-static socks will prevent you from discharging a static shock.
this is not true. i have seen a woman at my school (ITT-TECH) demo a pair of anti-static socks and fry ram from a pc.

always try to ground yourself with an anti-static wrist strap or at least atempt to discharge the static from your body purging it to a grounded case or somthing conductive.

I have a pair of shoe inserts with grounding pads on that wrap around to the bottom of the shoe, and a grounding wrist strap.

I always use this when opening any console or building computers. It only cost about £5 from local electronic store.

People think I'm crazy, but I've been working on computers for 22 years and I've never lost anything to static electricity. I never wear wrist straps or anti-static socks and anything like that. What I do is ground myself with the computer case while it's still plugged in and then make sure I don't shuffle around to get another build up of static in my body. I also don't work on a computer in a room that seems to build up static heavily.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't take precautions, just that if you watch what your doing and understand how it works, you should be ok.

i do the same as you sad.
only in school have i ever wore any static protection gear. mainly because we have to.
like you said ... long as you understand it you should be fine.
i been building pc's for almost 11 years now and repairing DC electronics with no problem at all

i only wear is from advice. quite often people say they got shock from me.

I build up static like nobody's business. I can shock my wife 6 or 7 times just walking through Wal-Mart.

technoe wrote:I build up static like nobody's business. I can shock my wife 6 or 7 times just walking through Wal-Mart.

Sounds good wish i was able to do that when mine when she dont behave.