There is a lot of fake products in the market, and sometimes the original products fail to protect electronic components from ESD.
My question is how do I test my gloves "with simple equipment" if it protect from ESD or not?
Electrical – How to test the gloves for ESD
antistaticesdtest-equipment
Related Solutions
This is a HUGE topic, one that we cannot possibly cover completely here. But I'll give a quick overview of the basics. I'm not trying to be 100% correct here, but at least 98% correct. What I mean by that is that I'm going to gloss over some of the details but I'm still largely telling you the truth.
- If ESD messes up your system, and there is not a direct path from the spark to your circuit, then the energy is being transferred as a radio wave.
- Any antenna is as good at receiving radio waves as transmitting them. Meaning, the same things you do to keep a signal from radiating EMI is also the same things you do at preventing EMI from being received. Do this for any signal that is important, not just signals that are wiggling a lot.
- Pay very close attention to "loop area", and minimize it. Google it if you don't know the term. This goes for more than just PCB's. It applies to cables too.
- A lot of ESD issues are from connectors and cables. If you didn't address ESD issues then you can assume that you have ESD issues. You can't just build it and hope that ESD isn't an issue on connectors, you must make it a non-issue.
- Look for any signal that could wiggle due to ESD/EMI, and fix it. This includes unconnected pins, etc.
- Reset signals are a common problem place. Usually they are pulled high with a large pullup resistor, and it's easy for a spike to pull it down. Pay close attention to signal routing and use a lower-value resistor if possible.
- Read my answer on protecting against ESD here: ESD protection of ADC input
- Properly handling ESD/EMI on a 2 layer PCB is difficult, but not impossible. It's much easier to do this on a 4 layer PCB with power and ground planes/layers.
While your JTAG port could be causing issues, I suspect that if it is an issue then it's just one of many issues. I have JTAG ports on all of my boards and have never had problems with them. Of course I've designed my boards to handle ESD from the start.
3KV sparks is actually really small, and indicates that you have a serious problem. Although most regulatory stuff requires 8KV, I highly recommend testing to 15KV or even 20KV.
I can't give you more info unless I see schematics, a photo of the PCB, and possibly a pic of the PCB layout.
While you are not likely to give a direct shock to components, ESD control also requires minimizing all electric fields. Triboelectric charging (charging from friction) can generate electric fields with a potential of thousands of volts which can travel through the air. To minimize this potential source of ESD you must control materials around sensitive electronic components and the humidity of the air (more humidity makes the air more conductive). The best way is to use grounding mats, straps ect.
An insulator between two potentials doesn't do much when you have fields that reach into the kV range, in short the best way is to make everything the same potential by grounding.
This being said ESD is about minimizing risk. Industries like medical and aerospace have zero tolerance for risk, you can't have a billion dollar satellite fail because someone zapped a component that cost a few dollars. If a production line is having failures or cannot tolerate the chance of a product failing in the field then ESD is a risk factor. The hard part is ESD failure is dependent on the component and the field and both of these are highly variable and makes the risk difficult to determine. The biggest problem ESD is an unknown risk factor so the best way to eliminate the risk is to ensure all fields are zero.
It sounds like your application will tolerate some risk, you need to balance the costs of ESD control with the costs of failure, since I don't know what your failure rate is I cannot speak for one or the other.
NASA\JPL implement some of the strictest ESD controls, check out this article on best practices. You will have to decide on what works for you, but make sure you understand how ESD problems arise and how they need to be controlled, then find out what works for you because ESD control comes with a time and capital costs.
Best Answer
If you want to test for stay electric fields that may be occurring from materials that are not ESD compliant. Get or build an ESD Field Meter. They measure ambient electric fields and can help determine if there are stray fields that may be impacting your electronic environment.
There is now way to make this measurement "with simple equipment" (meaning low cost) as electric field meters need mechanical chopping and very very high input impedance amplifiers (which means that pretty much everything with the exception of teflon and kapton look like conductors to those types of amplifiers). By simple if you mean easy to use, then yes, ESD field meters are easy to use.