******Lets end this debate now*****
I do appreciate those coming out to defend my position, however I have lost the debate due to the inability for me to provide the reasonable evidence Inaba has asked for.
2. The ESD boogey man is alive an well in every industry. The grey beards are just as ingrained if not more so than myself and it's an almost impossible habit to break. That said, please provide ANY statistics to back up that CONSUMER grade products have a failure rate that has been attributed to static discharge in any capacity beyond the norm. I can save you time: you can't. There are no abnormal failure rates due to ESD on consumer grade products. There are a number of factors that contribute to this, including the life expectancy of consumer products that is measured in months or a scant few years, not decades.
Inaba has asked that I provide evidence in the form of reports on consumer level ESD failures. In terms of the rules of debate, that is a perfectly reasonable request.
However, it would be nearly impossible for me to provide such reports for a couple of reasons:
1. No private business is ever going to publicly publish internal QA reports.
2. Detecting ESD failure is expensive. Normally involves equipment on the level of an electron microscope to see. It is not cost effective for electronic assembly businesses to try and detect such failures. If an item is returned or found defective at the plant, at most technicians will identify the failed part(s) and replace them.
3. Reports on plant QA or returns are focused on finding components that fail consistently, at which point they will take it up with the vendor. After that, it becomes a gray area of politics and economic leverage as to whether or not the vendor will spend time diagnosing the issue or just blame it on the assembly plant procedure or design of the final product. Even if the vendor does check for ESD, there is no way for john Q public to get that information unless it is volunteered, and it is not hard to see how often that would happen (never).
Sort of corporate espionage or a sufficient sample size of businesses volunteers the information, even if such information existed; I have no way of providing the requested evidence.
So in terms of this specific debate about ESD and consumer level electronics, I have to concede the debate to inaba , as I cannot provide the reasonable evidence requested for the above reasons.
This thread was about showing that singles existed and were being manufactured.
This whole argument has gotten out of control, and the thread needs to return to its original purpose.
