Content originally posted in LPCWare by nerd62 on Fri Jun 11 00:15:40 MST 2010
[B]One urgent message at first: ESD protection is necessary![/B]
Now I have created many microcontroller boards in my career - and I have seen many micros dieing by ESD discharge. An example: One floor upstairs I have reprogrammed a board on my desktop and checked its functionality, then I walked down with the board to check it in the field - and the micro was dead! So anything must be happened with the device on the stair between these floors! When I came to this company we had a lab not equipped with ESD protection (the production area is ESD protected!). I scrapped approximately 4 controllers in one year where I could not locate the cause to other failures (overvoltage, overcurrent, short circuit etc.) . It is always very time consuming to find out that one port pin does not work or the controller does not boot up because the XTAL circuitry is dead.
Now my boss had spent over 2000 EUR for an ESD proof floor and an ESD desktop mat and other ESD protection equipment. (Canespa has a good system for an ESD floor at an affordable price, which can be installed piece by piece, you can push the inventory away where you are installing the floor.) And since this day I had no defect microcontroller at all.
Defects by ESD is an often underestimated problem. It is also very urgent to check the equipment periodly (groundings, shoes, ...) - because you can't see a broken grounding wire, but your micro does it! The chain is only as good as its weakest link. And when you buy new equipment - think ESD! Always be conscious about ESD, buy the black storage boxes and not the grey ones and so on, it costs a bit more but it helps a lot.
