I'm almost convinced that this is a fraud. And being myself an engineer, I'm ashamed to say I'm a little confused since I'm supposed to know better... But I'd like to hear the opinion of the members of this forum, other than the opinions already posted in Amazon. Is this possible? I bought two of this a few years ago, and the description claimed that they worked using a so called "corona effect", which I later looked up, and found nothing about, at least related to ESD protection. As you can see, they no longer use this claim in their description, but it now reads "Current limiting resistor IMOhm .5%, Electro-scattering time 0.1sec, Rinsing resisting"
Also, they have changed the product's name, color and presentation (and price), so as to reset their sales pitch.

A this point it is my belief that there is no way to get rid of an electrostatic charge other than discharging it directly to ground... this taking place either through physical contact to ground itself, or through an irksome body-to-air-to-ground high voltage ESD... like the one one experiences when getting out of a car on a very dry day.
Here you'll find the critique I wrote about this infamous product.

 

Pure scam. All they are doing is throwing out techno-babble.

 

Agreed.

 

Yeah, but isn't it illegal? Isn't Amazon risking being sued or something? I mean, this is no "spiritual healing" or subjective babble about self help, this is a scientifically measurable thing they're claiming!

 

Yeah, but isn't it illegal? Isn't Amazon risking being sued or something? I mean, this is no "spiritual healing" or subjective babble about self help, this is a scientifically measurable thing they're claiming!

Anybody can be sued for anything. They just have to show good faith if you are suing for false advertising. Good faith is easy to do, it worked in their tests - no damaged motherboards when they opened their computer. If you get injured (unlikely), you can sue for that. If you damage a 7400-series chip, you can sue for that too. You just have to prove damages. Not many lawyers will take up a suit for a $0.35 chip. Or even for a $400 motherboard. Good luck.

 

Yeah, but isn't it illegal? Isn't Amazon risking being sued or something? I mean, this is no "spiritual healing" or subjective babble about self help, this is a scientifically measurable thing they're claiming!

So? It's pretty unreasonable to expect Amazon or any other store to be held liable for the claims of someone that uses their services to sell a product. You said so yourself -- you are an engineer and weren't positive that it was bogus, so how is someone that runs a website supposed to know -- and to know which of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of products that are sold on the side are and are not bogus? Just think of all the totally bogus crap that is advertised on TV and, especially, radio all day long.

 

Anybody can be sued for anything. They just have to show good faith if you are suing for false advertising. Good faith is easy to do, it worked in their tests - no damaged motherboards when they opened their computer. If you get injured (unlikely), you can sue for that. If you damage a 7400-series chip, you can sue for that too. You just have to prove damages. Not many lawyers will take up a suit for a $0.35 chip. Or even for a $400 motherboard. Good luck.

About the only way to do it is to have the suit elevated to the status of a class-action lawsuit. Of course, the only winners in that are the lawyers. And this company is probably a shell that has no assets and so they will just file bankruptcy if and when they get sued -- and because any law firm investigating the possibility of a class-action suit will discover this, they won't take up the suit.

 

Pure, weapons grade balonium. However, I do like the second version because I use my wrist watch strap to ground myself. Just add 100k to 1meg of resistance in series with a wire to an earth ground.

 

Thank you all for your input. Another question, and it might be a dumb question, but I'd rather ask it than remain dumb... Is there another way of getting rid of static electricity that doesn't involve direct physical contact?. Some sort of active circuit? Just as there is a way of generating static electricity, is there a way to de-generate it?

 

Water vapor/humidity.

 

Water vapor/humidity.

I meant other than the almost obvious...

 

Do those ion generators actually put ions in the air? If they do, it seems like those ions might move around and prevent significant static accumulation. I wonder how well it would compare to a simple humidifier.

 

which polarity ions would you generate? would they cancel or add to the static charge?

 

I'm almost convinced that this is a fraud. And being myself an engineer, I'm ashamed to say I'm a little confused since I'm supposed to know better... But I'd like to hear the opinion of the members of this forum, other than the opinions already posted in Amazon. Is this possible? I bought two of this a few years ago, and the description claimed that they worked using a so called "corona effect", which I later looked up, and found nothing about, at least related to ESD protection. As you can see, they no longer use this claim in their description, but it now reads "Current limiting resistor IMOhm .5%, Electro-scattering time 0.1sec, Rinsing resisting"
Also, they have changed the product's name, color and presentation (and price), so as to reset their sales pitch.

A this point it is my belief that there is no way to get rid of an electrostatic charge other than discharging it directly to ground... this taking place either through physical contact to ground itself, or through an irksome body-to-air-to-ground high voltage ESD... like the one one experiences when getting out of a car on a very dry day.
Here you'll find the critique I wrote about this infamous product.

Corona discharge can be used to ionise air:

http://arc.uta.edu/publications/td_files/paniker.pdf

Another way of doing it is to keep a source of ionising radiation close to the work area.

Having said that, I personally prefer to stick with the more conventional methods of managing static charges.

 

The commercial "ion generators" all claim to generate negative ions. Some go on to claim that this helps neutralize positively-charged dust particles so that they are more easily removed from the air.

Wikipedia notes that ion generators ARE indeed used to protect electronics from static build-up. I again wonder if it's any better than a little moisture.

 

The commercial "ion generators" all claim to generate negative ions. Some go on to claim that this helps neutralize positively-charged dust particles so that they are more easily removed from the air.

Wikipedia notes that ion generators ARE indeed used to protect electronics from static build-up. I again wonder if it's any better than a little moisture.

Certain parts of America have seasonal hot dry winds blow in off a desert somewhere - anti-static handling can be a total nightmare for them when that happens.

OTOH: The mental case who used to be in the flat above me used to damage the water pipes from time to time - I could chuck P-MOS around like it was RTL (DTL could be a bit sensitive on the input diodes!).

 

Certain parts of America

That would be L.A. and Orange County and they call the wind Mariah.

No, wait...That's a song. The winds are called the Santa Ana winds.

As an after-thought, if Version 2 actually worked, that would mean that wearing a wrist watch protects against static electricity.

 

That would be L.A. and Orange County and the wind is called Mariah.

No, wait...That's a song. The winds are called the Santa Ana winds.

As an after-thought, if Version 2 actually worked, that would mean that wearing a wrist watch protects against static electricity.

Depends how radioactive the luminous dial is.

Its easy to tell by the withered left hand.

 

Pure, weapons grade balonium. However, I do like the second version because I use my wrist watch strap to ground myself. Just add 100k to 1meg of resistance in series with a wire to an earth ground.

Did you mean Polonium?

Polonium apha emission will remove static, as when using very sensitive balances. We had little brushes like this containing the stuff by our balances:


With many things, using moisture was out of the question.

John

 

Did you mean Polonium?

Polonium apha emission will remove static, as when using very sensitive balances. We had little brushes like this containing the stuff by our balances:
View attachment 78762

With many things, using moisture was out of the question.

John

A few decades ago the audiophools were being tempted by shelves of radioactive anti-static spray to squirt at their records.