Electronic – ESD Anti static mat Grounding and AC volts

Butyl Rubber - effective, low cost, easy to use:

Choose any three :-).

Butyl rubber sheet, as used for roof waterproofing and similar, is cheap compared to "proper" antistatic mats. The rubber contains carbon black which provides the conductivity.

Here they shipped large bales of it with a wrapper sheet on the outside which they sold off very cheaply. I bought several square meters of it and it has served very well.

Any sort of conductivity at all will work. 1 megohm per square is fine.

Care! - Very low resistance material is potentially (pun intended) dangerous as it can short to equipment under test or repair. Steven's metal sheet could be very exciting in some cases :-).

I understand that some linoleum flooring works OK. As acceptable resistance can be so high as to be hard to measure, testing with a very simple electrostatic generator would work - as simple as some materials which allow static charge to be produced when rubbed together. If it will discharge electrostatically charged items almost instantly it should be acceptable.

It doesn't matter, as long as some resistance is there.

The resistor limits the current from the discharge to something that won't damage the device. The actual value of the resistor is mostly arbitrary, it should be large enough to properly limit the current from even an 1 kV difference, and small enough to eventually allow the potential to even out within a sensible timeframe.

Whether it's 500 kOhm, 1 MOhm or 2 MOhm is not that important, so use whatever is most convenient for you, ideally a configuration where the wire from the wristband doesn't catch on the soldering iron all the time.

I'm using a grounded ESD chair, which is even more convenient, but I've also seen ESD sandals and grounded floor plates.