No vast experience with carpet mitigation, but I've been lead to believe
over decades that

 - You can greatly reduce carpet ESD levels but are unlikely to get them
down to the level where no other protection is needed.

- Anti-static sprays and surface treatments for carpet can remove the
shocks that people feel but as above, are not reliable as a sole protection
for electronics.

- ESD hazards are both real AND overstated by protection supplies. How you
determine where the line is is 'the trick'.

It may be that copper wire grids at enough more protection - but the
general argument has been that bulk grounding tends to work well enough
where the surface proper is not an ESD generator.

Body capacitance certainly affects discharge energy levels - connecting
multiple bodies increases the felt shock markedly. A shuffling line of
zombies, with the lead zombie (read engineering department staff member)
pointing a finger at oncoming victims, produced fearsome results. The
victim and lead zombie were about equally impacted but all participants
felt a shock cross person to person gripped hands at discharge time. Filing
cabinets do a nice job as (painful) person discharge points.

_____________________

Many decades ago we were losing a significant percentage of eproms in a
development environment - using the then standard UV erasable ones.  Better
attention to electrostatic handling after UV exposure reduced failures to
about zero.
I've never seen another so clear cut example.

Butyl rubber sheet (carbon loaded) on development desks seems to work very
well.
These may mar the cosmesis if used on carpet :-).


               Russell


On Thu, 12 Dec 2019 at 08:26, Neil <picdude3@narwani.org> wrote:

> I'm remodeling an office and would like to make the ground (carpet)
> anti-static if possible.  I'm using nylon carpet, not anything
> ESD-specific, but I understand that if I place a grid of copper strips
> (grounded) first and use conductive adhesive, it would make a noticeable
> difference, even for non-ESD carpet  The carpet manufacturer (Interface)
> says that there is a bit of ESD "protection" in that carpet anyway.
>
> I don't need this to meet any spec or be certified, etc... just looking
> to help protect all my open PCB's from possible damage while I'm here.
>
> Any of you know if this is worth the effort/cost?  Or any other things I
> can do to add a bit of ESD protection.
>
> Cheers,
> -Neil.
>
>
--=20
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