The soldering station being a verified ESD safe model is an absolute must. It has to be fully isolated with a built in transformer. I wouldn't attempt any critical electronic work without one and dealing with FETs requires it without exception.
Removing your shoes before work is usually sufficient to avoid any significant static charge buildup on your body. After sitting down and before starting work, always touch the ground plane connection of your work piece first (if it has one) or the negative power supply connection going to any larger electrolytic caps in your circuit. That immediately equalizes you and the circuit at the same potential. Also make sure larger filter caps have been safely discharged with a 4.7k resistor and remain discharged.
Grounding straps can provide a false sense of security under some circumstances, actually creating a higher differential static charge across your body depending on clothing and ambient humidity. Only use a decent quality ground strap with an internal resistor built in and test the strap with an ohm meter before each use. Its always best to touch the ground connection on your work piece at regular intervals just to be sure you're always maintaining the same potential with it. In theory the ground strap will do this automatically but its an extra measure of security.
Sometimes even when nothing bad happens to a part that is mishandled, it can still have suffered partial damage which may degrade performance, either immediately or long term, affecting reliability.
Removing your shoes before work is usually sufficient to avoid any significant static charge buildup on your body. After sitting down and before starting work, always touch the ground plane connection of your work piece first (if it has one) or the negative power supply connection going to any larger electrolytic caps in your circuit. That immediately equalizes you and the circuit at the same potential. Also make sure larger filter caps have been safely discharged with a 4.7k resistor and remain discharged.
Grounding straps can provide a false sense of security under some circumstances, actually creating a higher differential static charge across your body depending on clothing and ambient humidity. Only use a decent quality ground strap with an internal resistor built in and test the strap with an ohm meter before each use. Its always best to touch the ground connection on your work piece at regular intervals just to be sure you're always maintaining the same potential with it. In theory the ground strap will do this automatically but its an extra measure of security.
Sometimes even when nothing bad happens to a part that is mishandled, it can still have suffered partial damage which may degrade performance, either immediately or long term, affecting reliability.
It is a bit of an experiment to me building a circuit with two JFETs after a long time of failures but I guess I have more than enough advise now to try again 🙂 After I soldered them in and tested I will let you all know the result in this thread. I am looking forward to try again, with more confidence I will succeed 👍
Its honestly not complicated. Just need to learn good habits when working with FETs and other cmos devices. I've honestly never used grounding straps working with sensitive components and had ZERO issues since the 70s when these parts came out and have fallen into the mainstream hobbyists hands.
Area makes a big difference. I lived in Tucson for awhile and year round you'd get a substantial zap from even clothing movement when touching the door handle of a car. Relative humidity of 8% was typical. My AC was really a giant humidifier (called a swamp cooler) and except for rainy season was very low humidity. If you live in a desert, I think it may be challenging to achieve a static free environment. Thankfully I live in a much damper area now and so std precautions of a mat and wrist strap, grounded iron etc have meant no fried fets.
Most devices these days have pretty substantial ESD protection on the chip, but some devices don't (some exotic RF devices and opto-electronics) and they are much more sensitive. Its worth knowing that devices can degrade through ESD, rather than just fail outright, so ESD problems may go incorrectly diagnosed sometimes.
if it is about small TO92 THT devices, wrapping them using a piece of wirewrap wire before (de)soldering is a cheap solution.
If more complicated mechanically, a piece of household Alu foil to short legs, will do.
(if the circuit does not work, check if you removed the short! Been there, done that...)
If more complicated mechanically, a piece of household Alu foil to short legs, will do.
(if the circuit does not work, check if you removed the short! Been there, done that...)
The best material is anti-static foam - high value resistance limits current in any discharge while sticking pins in the foam, but it conducts enough to prevent static build up once on the component pins. Using metal foil is great for the latter, not great for the former. Anti-static wristbands similarly have a high value resistance in the lead.