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An ESD flooring system helps control the static electric charge safely and serves as a barrier from accumulating a person’s movement across a polymer floor. The correct ESD flooring can significantly reduce or even eliminate the ESD charge. The reduction or elimination is essential since releasing the electrostatic charge can cause massive damage to sensitive electronic components.

Complete ESD protection

There are ESD anti-static coatings designed to meet and exceed today’s performance standards. These ESD components are crucial, so much so that they have consistently performed without hot or dead spots. This yields more consistent ESD performance throughout the entire thickness of the coating, not just the surface.

Complete ESD protection is necessary for the electronics industry and is especially true within circuit board assembly and production. There are strict regulations surrounding specific industries. So, to stay compliant, certain protocols must be followed, which are outlined by OSHA and NFPA.

What’s available

If downtime is not a concern, a more direct glue-down option is an alternative to an interlocking floor, where a more open layout exists and when subfloors are ready to go and can accept glue-down flooring. Ohm-style modular carpet tiles are also available and can provide a more decorative look. These floor tiles act like a sponge and can quickly absorb static electricity from the root cause and embed that charge into the flooring material. Built-in conductive fibers take control through the subfloor and ground-point connection.

For a more industrial look, epoxy is mostly used. Epoxy is a water-based, two-part epoxy-acrylate finish designed for industrial areas, such as shipping and receiving, warehouses, high-traffic aisles and production floors. This epoxy style is an excellent solution compared to interlocking and glue-down flooring. One thing to note, however, is that the subflooring must be in the position to accept a finish. So, downtime cannot be critical since it needs to cure appropriately.

There are also solvent and stain-resistant mats that can be used in the industrial area. ESD mats are primarily used to have static control and are critical during electronic assembly and manufacturing.

PIP’s InhibiStat

Our InhibiStat ESD-control technology can be added to any system, such as floor coating systems, broadcast flooring systems, slurry flooring systems,  industrial flooring systems and mortar flooring systems. These ignition-controlled floors provide comprehensive safety. Learn more about this ESD-control technology and how it fits into your facility.

Sean Walsh
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