History – Ground Zero Electrostatics Blog

5 Reasons Why Static Programs Fail

On May 6, 1937, the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed, killing 36 people in front of national news cameras and effectively ending the Zeppelin flying experiment.

The Hindenburg was larger than 4 Goodyear blimps combined, or about as long as 2/3 the height of the Empire State Building.

It was rainy that day, and the mooring ropes dragged along the ground as the airship came down to dock in Manchester Township. The prevailing theory is that the wet dragging ropes generated a static charge that traveled up them onto the ship.

There the charge ignited the Hydrogen fuel and… boom. Once considered the future of air travel, flying airships would not be utilized, either commercially or for military use until the end of World War II.

All caused by a single spark.

Much like the Hindenburg disaster, your company’s program to control electrostatic discharge (ESD) can be toppled with a few small errors that blossom into larger problems if they aren’t properly accounted and planned for.

So today, let’s look at the 5 common reasons why your static control programs could fail.

Sure! We have ESD Protocols, Right?

Most companies that deal with sensitive electronics and circuit boards also require that their vendors, third party suppliers, and subcontractors have an ESD program in place. Often even before signing a contract, an engineer is sent in to audit the ESD practices. And from time to time they will do spot-checks to verify that those practices are still in place.

Some companies, in an effort to hold on to their contract or cut expenses, will simply throw together a minimum program that can be audited. It’s done as inexpensively as possible and often doesn’t have any true protocols – training, preventative maintenance, and enforcement fall by the wayside.

You’d never do that, right? Well, except…

This is Gonna Cost How Much?

Top management are always looking at ways to work more economically. Unfortunately, if they are not properly briefed on the importance of proper ESD protection protocols, they may see many aspects of the ESD program as expensive and possibly unnecessary.

This isn’t their fault, they just need to be better educated. Which may be your job. The fact is, the expense for good, well-developed ESD protection protocols is dwarfed by the cost to replace or repair non-functioning components, not to mention the company’s reputation.

Excellent ESD companies are led from the top down, with company leadership not only showing financial support for ESD preventative programs, but also making time to attend training themselves, praise persons and departments with the best implementation, and allocate time and funds for ongoing training and improvement of existing programs.

Otherwise, you might end up in a pinch…

Here’s a Band-Aid for that Severed Limb!

You might have heard the old saw, ‘if there’s no time to do it right the first time, how are you going to find time to fix it later?’

Unfortunately, many companies appear to follow a different maxim – there’ll always be time to do it over.

Like our last reason, the problem is often financial. Momentary solutions that can be quickly applied to fix individual problems becomes the norm, despite the fact that the long term expense is much higher.

The best, most cost-effective solutions are applied right the first time and “solve” lots of problems by the fact that they prevent so many of them for happening. Then you don’t get into a situation where you’re spending a lot more to fix what could have been an easily avoided minor problem, but is now mission critical.

But that’s not going to help unless…

Training? We Don’t Need no Stinking Training!

Proper ESD prevention is a team effort, but many companies underestimate the size of the team involved. As mentioned before, upper level management should take an interest in training, and in fact, every employee should be given at least a rudimentary class or video in how to follow the company’s practices.

It’s not enough to train the engineers of you haven’t informed the janitorial staff that cleans their sensitive work areas after they leave for the day how to properly do so.

Secretaries, interns, sales people – everyone who has the potential to walk into or affect an Electrostatic Protection Area (EPA) needs to know how to properly behave to minimize risk.

And finally…

We Only Use the Best – the Best We Can Afford, That Is.

Yes, it keeps coming back to price. But price should not be the only factor in deciding who to buy your ESD supplies from. Not all companies are created equally. Not all ESD products are held to the highest standard.

You want to find a vendor that can supply your ESD needs who can guarantee all of their products are properly tested, meet or exceed industry standards, and have the certification to prove it.

Always be sure to properly vet your chosen vendor, making sure they meet these requirements and be willing to ask for clients you can speak to and recommendations you can verify. If they’re reputable, they’ll be more than willing to have you check them out with their existing happy clients.

ESD prevention is no casual task. Your company may not have the risk of ending 36 lives, but putting best practices into place can certainly save jobs, computers and your clients.

We’d love to be the experts you can count on for your full service, seamless ESD solutions. For more information or advice on your specific ESD prevention needs – or any other ESD questions, please contact us today.

Edison vs Tesla: The Battle for Electric Power

The year was 1887…

It was a battle royale – Jefferson vs Adams, the North vs the South, Hulk Hogan vs Randy Macho Man Savage, Jobs vs Wozniak, Trump vs Clinton… AC vs DC.

And when the dust settled, the guy who won really lost and the guy who lost became the champion that everyone remembers.

Back in the day before anti-trust laws forced the breakup of the remaining empire, the source of electricity – the power company – was known by one name… Edison. The name still lingers at Con-Ed in New York, SoCal Edison in California, and smaller units scattered all across the United States. But the power that comes into your house wasn’t the famous inventor’s idea.

First Meeting

In 1882, Nikola Tesla left his phone company job in his native Serbia and headed to Paris where he found employment with the Continental Edison Company. There, he so impressed his superiors that they recommended his transfer to the United States, noting that his genius rivaled that of their founder.

Tesla was excited to meet one of his heroes, a man who had accomplished so much with so little training. But this hope quickly died. The very genius that should have brought them together, because of their mutually high opinions of themselves, in fact created a rift almost immediately.

Self-taught Edison preferred to do tedious trial and error experimentation – hence his famous quote about finding 10,000 ways that didn’t work – while Tesla was a trained engineer and creative dreamer who preferred to come up with theories before testing them practically. Which drove them both somewhat crazy.

Tesla lasted less than a year working with his former hero.

While Edison is famous these days for his quotes on productivity – “Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration,” Tesla believed that mindset was Edison’s biggest stumbling block:

If he had a needle to find in a haystack he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once, with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search… I was almost a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90% of his labor.–Nikola Tesla

The War of the Currents

But the most famous falling out between the two men came to become known as the “War of the Currents.”

Edison stood by direct current (DC), while Tesla advocated for alternating current (AC).

The man who became a household name after his invention of the light bulb, the phonograph, the movie camera and countless other helpful, soon to be household items, didn’t want to bring “dangerous” alternating current into every home. He was convinced the best way, and certainly the safest way, to power the world was through single direction DC power.

But Tesla, with his theoretical approach, pointed out that DC power had severe limitations that would impact the future. In the 1880’s, DC technology only allowed for a power grid with a one-mile radius from the power source. And while DC only went one way, AC power allowed the flow of energy to go both ways, creating a much more practical solution for transmitting large quantities of energy to power an industrial city, which he predicted the United States would rapidly see more of in the coming years.

Unfortunately, Tesla did not always employ his considerable prognostication techniques to his own life. In his efforts to prove his former mentor wrong, he made a deal with a Pittsburgh industrialist whose name would also become a household word – George Westinghouse. Westinghouse paid Tesla a handsome fee, including residuals, for his AC motor and electrical transmission patents and began a campaign to make the public aware of his newly purchased invention.

In retaliation, Edison launched his own propaganda campaign against alternating current, even sending Professor Harold Brown on a “speaking” tour, where he routinely used AC power to electrocute dogs, horses, elephants and a convicted ax murderer in New York.

But everything changed on May 1, 1893—stay tuned next week to find out!