DIY ESD-safe Storage Ideas + Adafruit plasic cups Q

[frizz]

I have a small plastic drawer case which is perfect for a workbench. Trouble is, there is no way it is ESD safe, and it is just itching to zap an IC. What I have is exactly what I need, so I don't care to drop US$50 for a new drawer case that isn't quite what I want.

It occurred to me that taking an anti-static clothes dryer sheet and wiping down all of the surfaces could work. Would it work? Or maybe something else to treat the box?

I have noticed in pics on this website that Adafruit techs use plastic cups for "working storage." Are the cups special or treated in some way, or are they strictly for components such as resistors that are not damaged by ESD?

[Franklin97355]

There is this stuff but I'll see if anyone knows about the rest of your questions.

[adafruit_support_mike]

For everyday component storage, lining drawers with a chunk of dryer sheet works.

Wiping the surface with a dryer sheet works temporarily, but you don't want to wipe down all your storage bins every couple of days.

Pink antistatic bag material makes a good drawer liner, as does aluminum foil if you want to be really, really sure.

Most chips these days have good ESD protection, so they aren't as fragile as mosfets were back in the 1980s. You can still blow a chip if you're careless (we see a spike in dead-first-NeoPixel reports every fall when the air gets dry), but you don't need a bunny suit and two redundant ground straps.

Use a sheet of antistatic material in the bottom of your storage trays, dump your parts on a chunk of Velostat when you're ready to work with them, keep a chunk of copper clad connected to Earth GND through a 1M resistor and touch that before picking up chips, don't scuff your feet on the carpet while brushing the cat's fur with a glass comb immediately before touching your ICs, etc.

[frizz]

Thank you both for the help.

Because it seems to be the easiest, I think I am going line the 2-3 drawers for ESD-sensitive components with aluminum foil.

I have an anti-ESD mat with ground & wrist strap. If I touch the aluminum foil while wearing the strap, am I being safe? Or should I have a 1M resistor between my body and the foil lining?

If that is the case, I can glue foil on the drawer handle, and connect it to the foil lining with a 1M resistor.

[adafruit_support_mike]

You want a 1M resistor between yourself and Earth ground on the off-chance that you'll touch something connected to wall power. In that situation your body would become the lowest-resistance path to ground, which Would Be Bad. The 1M resistor eliminates that low-resistance path at wall-power voltages (though it's still a bad idea to go around poking hot power lines), but still counts as low-resistance for the kilovolt/nanocoulomb energy levels of static electricity.

A piece of foil without a connection to any power source doesn't pose any safety risk. You can touch the foil directly, and if you're using a ground strap your touch will normalize any charge on the foil to 0v. You can add a resistor if you want, but it isn't necessary.