High Pressure Blower - USB/Small handheld

For those who do not know about static electricity and electronics, you do not need to have a visible spark for there to be a problem. The discharge can be completely invisible but still do damage. A visible spark is likely to do heaps of damage. And there is also damage that happens by field effect. If you have a static charge on you or some equipment, and you put it near a semiconductor junction, you are creating an electrostatic field between the two, which is also capable of doing damage. Static damage will not necessarily immediately kill a device - it may only weaken it and reduce its lifetime. Field effect damage is more likely to work like this.

So whenever you are working on electronics, always make sure you are using a wrist strap to keep yourself at the same potential as the electronics. And preferably also use an anti-static mat under the electronics as well. When electronic devices are not in a circuit, or a card is not in a device, keep them inside anti-static bags and only touch them when you have a wrist strap on and are at the same potential as the bag. If you are careful with your electronics, it can have a very long life. If you never take proper anti-static precautions, it is likely that your electronics will die early and often.

If you are working on electronics and do not have a proper setup, but you do have a stainless steel sink bench, by law that sink bench must be grounded, so it is a good workspace. If you keep one hand on the metal, you will also be properly grounded. However, make sure whatever you are working on is never powered up on the sink bench as a short to such a good ground from the mains through you is usually fatal. Proper wrist straps and anti-static mats come with a big resistor in the path to earth to prevent death in the case of mains coming in contact with the mat or wrist strap. The resistor slows down the discharge of static electricity also, so when you put on the wrist strap or touch the mat, if you have a charge on you there will not be a spark as it discharges.

If you are going to use a compressor and ground its nozzle, that ground also needs to be the same one connected to the PC you are working on and to you via a wrist strap. I would still not recommend using a compressor though, unless you are able to test its airflow for static electricity by using an electroscope. Having the nozzle grounded does not necessarily mean that all the air coming out of the nozzle is at ground potential. Air does not conduct well so air from the sides of the nozzle may have been grounded, but air from the centre may not. The air blowers used around electronics production lines used to ensure the air was not carrying a static charge by passing it past a radiation source. There is probably a better way now, but when I was working for an electronics manufacturing company, our Chief Engineer had to be certified for handling the atomic radiation used in the blowers.

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