Wooden breadboard -base may rise risks for Arduino and sensors ?

I want to keep my Arduino UNO and 2 separate 800 points plastic breadbords all grouped together.

I know that they are large plastic boards (4 or more conventional 800 points breadbords glued together) but I like to keep apart different segments of the experiments.

For now, I use a rigid plastic cover (A4) covered by a cotton line. Not very stable. And I am concerned about electrostatics.

So, I would like to build a new base, in 12 cm thickness wood, covered by a line of cotton.

Question:

Are they any risks for my Arduino and sensors for this (I addmit - unusual) construct? Electrostatics or conductive problems or whatever?

Thank you for your help!

I think that wood and (pure) cotton are good choices. Neither is conductive or capable of storing much static charge. Well, wood may be a tiny tiny bit conductive, but the resistance would probably be many meg ohms.

12cm thick? Like the width of your hand plus a couple of fingers? That seems like overkill to me. (unless you mean something else for thickness, like left-right width, or top-bottom height).

I have several stuck on a clipboard, with some holes drilled to secure an Arduino to it. The clip is handy for holding ends of wires, and you also stick on additional wire holders.

Only problem is flammability. Make sure your power sources are sufficiently current limited so that an accidental short won't start a fire.

*mm (sorry)

Wood is OK. Where I work, we have rolling wire-metal shelves covered with particle board in our burn-in room. For certain assemblies, we place PC boards flat on the shelves (with the circuit-side in full-contact with the wood) and power them up for a few days of burn-in at elevated temperature. We've been dong that for more than 15 years. (Without the wood insulator, the metal would short-out the boards.)

The wood is not conductive enough to pass ESD testing,* but I've never seen a spark generated by wood and our boards don't die.

And at home, I usually solder on a "disposable" piece of wood.

  • The QA folks who routinely test the ESD mats on our workbenches haven't realized what we are doing in the burn-in room. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: But, we also have a wood-topped shelf in our production area and that's been tested. It fails and it's got a "Do not place ESD sensitive parts..." sticker on it. Of course we do, because we are an electronics company and most stuff we work on is static sensitive! ...Maybe someday, they'll get around to putting an ESD mat on that shelf.

Unless the OP is using a grounded wrist strap while working on his projects, he is wasting his time. Any plastic, including his breadboards can build up a static charge.

The usual culprit in ESD damage is a person wearing some synthetic clothing, walking across a Nylon carpet and then touching something electronic. See the spark?

Paul

@ Paul

So an wood base would decrease the potential places of static charges?

I see nothing against wearing a wrist strap, but this has to be carefully earthed. And, to be honest, I never see somebody wearing it. It is even very difficult to find one in my market. Of course, no big deal in a DiY bracelet. But, do I really need one?

Look at plastic cutting boards, lots of colours shapes and sizes.
Some have finger holes, others are solid.
I have one ~1/2" thick, another at 1"

Some ideas here:

@ Larryd

I can see only one pic.

I also consider those boards. But I do not know what sort of plastic are they and whether are static-charge proof.

There are 4 images.
These are usually anti microbial, polyethylene and are non static if you don't rub them with silk :wink:

I have used these for many years with no problems.

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falexandru:
@ Paul

So an wood base would decrease the potential places of static charges?

I see nothing against wearing a wrist strap, but this has to be carefully earthed. And, to be honest, I never see somebody wearing it. It is even very difficult to find one in my market. Of course, no big deal in a DiY bracelet. But, do I really need one?

Yes, wood is good. We use a wooden platform some times as an arm rest to place or align SMT parts on a circuit board that has been solder pasted. Board can slip under the platform if necessary. The platform sets on an ESD mat.

An ESD wrist strap and connecting wire contains a 1 meg ohm resistor so the wearer can't get shocked. All my people use one when working. They also wear two foot straps to ground them to the concrete floor. Each morning they test both the wrist strap and the foot straps on a testing machine and record the test results.

ESD is cumulative in effect, so every little "zap" may not immediately cause a defect, but may add up over time to cause a failure. We don't want failures!

I forgot, we also require the employees to wear ESD jackets. These have fabric with conductive threads woven into the cloth.

Paul

@ Paul
Practically speaking, how do you connect the wrist strap to earth? How do you know it is effective? You said your workers test it each morning. But how they are sure it is effective during the day?

Some people say it is sufficient to touch an earthed wire time by time to avoid static charge to grow.

Sorry for my basic questions - I read a lot on the internet about ESD but almost all is rather academic.

In my case - working Arduino as a hobby (for a couple of hours daily) - would a wrist strap be required? Well, is not a matter of costs or convenience. I just want to understand.

Connect your wrist strap to something metallic, the strap has resistance and will bleed off any static discharge you may have picked.
Ideally you would have an ESD mat that your electronics are being worked on that is also grounded.

In the workplace, an ESD strap tester is used to ensure the straps are still good. The tester would be periodically calibrated.
https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&q=esd+wrist+strap+tester&oq=esd+wrist+strap+test&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l4.54979.60115.0.63243.26.15.0.0.0.0.429.669.2-1j0j1.2.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..24.2.668.fV85PRQSK80

In practice, grounding yourself periodically by touching something metallic is good enough, and chips are pretty durable once they are installed in a card. Bare chips are the most susceptible. Use only ESD bubble wrap (the pink stuff), ESD bags (pink plastic, or have a metallic look to them), or the black anti-static foam for storing your parts. No clear plastic bags, no Styrofoam, no plain paper in your work environment.
Pay more attention in dry heated winter air, that's great for generating static.

Spray carpets (especially new carpets) with water mixed with a small amount of fabric softener.

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Useful practical tips!

I am thinking of making a wooden box with separators to store the sensitive components. Perhaps lined by "conductive sponge" - whatever would that sponge be.

That would fit the wooden breadboard quite nicely.

falexandru:
@ Paul
Practically speaking, how do you connect the wrist strap to earth? How do you know it is effective?

In some countries...... the power mains socket will have an 'earth' socket. A "dummy" male power plug having only the earth pin is used. No wire is connected to the neutral pin. And no wire is connected to the active pin. One end of a resistor (eg. 1 Mega Ohm) is connected to the earth pin of the plug. And the other end of the resistor is connected to one end of an electrically conductive wrist-strap. The wrist strap is worn on the wrist.....ensuring metal from the strap is touching your body.

Then..... once you are absolutely sure that the dummy plug is correctly wired (eg. plug into a disconnected multi-socket power board and use a multi-meter to make sure that the earth pin of the strap is electrically connected to the other earth pins of the power board), the dummy plug can then be plugged into a mains socket. Wearing the wrist-strap allows you to be earthed. Charge on your body will then be removed due to the earthing.

We know it's effective because companies like Agilent (aka it's other names ... Keysight etc) recommend it for any of their machines that are sensitive to ESD. And particular laboratories having electronic devices and measurement instruments (that are vulnerable to ESD damage) require everybody to have gone through some kind of induction or training procedure - involving usage of wrist straps, earth mats etc.

Many electronics devices are much better protected these days with inbuilt ESD protection. But better to be careful anyway.

Google "Conductive Foam"

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falexandru:
@ Paul
Practically speaking, how do you connect the wrist strap to earth? How do you know it is effective? You said your workers test it each morning. But how they are sure it is effective during the day?

Some people say it is sufficient to touch an earthed wire time by time to avoid static charge to grow.

Sorry for my basic questions - I read a lot on the internet about ESD but almost all is rather academic.

In my case - working Arduino as a hobby (for a couple of hours daily) - would a wrist strap be required? Well, is not a matter of costs or convenience. I just want to understand.

As a hobby, the electronics part of my shop has none of the commercial stuff I wrote about. Never has, never will. The only ESD piece is a soldering iron that is grounded to the 3rd pin of the outlet. I have never has a problem traced to ESD. Always something else! I would not worry much about ESD at home, if I were you.

If you notice yourself getting shocked from static electricity, then you might take steps to ensure your personal charge is drained off before setting down to work on electronics.

Paul

@ Paul
Thank you! Good to know.

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I got the plank. Usually, I treat wood by lin (flax) oil for an wonderful look. Would this treatment modify the properties of the wood in respect of ESD or otherwise? Thanks!