Topic: Wondering where your BFL Singles are? - page 2. (Read 6285 times)

Truth be told I always make sure the laptops are disconnected before i dismantle them

So when I take every single GPU I get apart and replace the thermal paste (in a carpeted room, on a wooden desk, with no protection), they should all be fried by now? Now I am somewhat cautious: I try not to place them ON the carpet, and I tend to touch my computer case when I"m about to pick the GPU up, but still...

Side note, I have actually fried one single piece of hardware ever. At work, I reached into a running computer to feel how hot a HD was. I touched the running HD, felt a zap, and the computer shut down, and the drive wouldn't spin. We got a replacement from Dell. Only thing I've ever had fry on me...

Haha, same.  I just set it on my kitchen table and have at it.  :p

So, according to dreamwatcher all my laptops should be fried by now from me dismantling them piece by piece every 3 months without any kind of ESD protection whatsoever...

Cool!

Also, you can see some sort of surface with rounded corners on top of the workbench.  Look next to her left elbow.  Maybe that's the ESD mat, and the lead from the ground terminal is grounding it?

RE: ESD Straps... Look at the outlet closest to the 90's radio. There is some sort of 2 prong device and then what appears to be an ESD strap lead plugged into the ground terminal. Just sayin' 

Precisely, welcome to the internet.

Funny story, I once rested my elbow on my tower as I was disconnecting the PSU from the power strip. It sent a charge through my arm, which abruptly stopped at my elbow.
In the end, everything went better than expect.

Don't be ridiculous. If I had 1000 BTC I would have something better to do with them.
To bad I have to add that as a disclaimer as of every post I make.

From my casual observation you are overly concerned for a independent party about bystander comments like mine, again just a thought. Move on dude, it's just my humble opinion.

PS: LOL Internet.

I read that as pornography. Imagine someone coming in with a camera and taking a picture of one of your people "browsing" in his/her office. Remember kids, you do different things at work when you are bored.

I wonder what would be worse, that or Chinese Knock-Off Guitar Plant quality in terms of pr.

Yes, because the last thing from this company is LESS transparency . Right ...

You are a genius !

Step 2 - forbid any photography by visitors because it might result in bad publicity.

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but that Minirig assembly area really does look like a plain wood table sitting on top of carpet.

As to ESD, in consumer gear it isn't much of a problem. Manufacturer's work hard to protect their devices, and a lot of the reason why it's so much less of an issue now is the almost fanatical control that exists in modern electronics assembly line. That being said, handling an iPod or graphics card is entirely different than handling unmounted individual components. Many small components are still very susceptible to ESD, and if their facility where they populate the PCBs (assuming they do it themselves) looks anything like their MR assembly area I would be very worried about it. SD tile isn't THAT expensive, but even a proper smock, wrist strap and ESD table mat would be a great start. This is an issue of will as opposed to cost, they could probably outfit all the tables and their production employees for the cost of one Single.

FYI - this is a non debate.  Ours is an ESD protected environment.  I would agree with Inaba in terms of scale of concern, but it's not an issue either way.  Open board work is done with ESD Matts & pretty blue wrist straps.   (I feel icky for having stepped in to answer this at all)

I just wanted to chime in with some wisdom from the former CEO of my company who actually had a long experience managing assembly lines in the electronic industry.

The neatnik streak as displayed by dreamwatcher, especially the anti-ESD propaganda, is just a cover for the real management issues:

1) theft, both occasional and organized.
2) sabotage, especially when temporary labor force is employed.
3) anti-union or other political/labor issues, e.g. drug distribution amongst the people doing monotone work.
4) need for managerial control of positive factors: tracking of the good workers for possible promotion.
5) need for managerial control of negative factors: locating and investigating of workplace accidents and incidents.
6) saleability, state of being visibly spotless, mostly in case of consumer goods.
7) ESD is nowadays mostly a human factor, not a technical precaution. When people are repeatedly zapped their productivity goes down and it increases the chance of accidents.

Really, please think a bit about the history of the USA. Messrs. Hewlett and Packard probably should consider themselves lucky that nobody was there in their garage to make a snapshot of the sweat on their backs as they assembled the first laboratory oscillator that they sold to Walt Disney.

It wasn't directed specifically at you, just in general. 

I am not saying ESD is not a concern under certain conditions, with certain electronics and at certain places.  I am saying modern consumer electronics are far more robust than 1980's era electronics. 

Now lets address the weakened transistor junctions on BFL singles:  If it's weakened to the point of a shorten life span, it with either A) fail nearly immediately or within the first 36 - 48 hours of burn in.  or B) Fail so far down the road that the device has long since become useless.  I'm not really up for getting into a debate about this.  ESD is a boogy man for modern consumer grade electronics, plain and simple... the fact that there are billions of electronic devices out there, all operating fine on a day to day basis is proof enough of this assertion.  Trying to provide any other evidence to the contrary on my part pales in comparison to the real world, day to day activities of millions of people, so I won't even try. 


I can give you the gamut of electronic assembly plants that go from the clean room Intel plants that cost millions or billions to build to some dude making crap out of his garage, so that doesn't really work as an example.  Examples covering the entire spectrum of assembly can be picked a dime a dozen. 

But lets examine the ESD protocols at assembly plants very briefly:  Those that have extended precautions and you see the clean rooms, etc... what do they do?  They work on component level systems and subsystems.  Those things require more ESD awareness than a fully assembled unit or even a fully P&P board with everything already soldered on and packaged to go.  While I fully believe you can dig up examples of extensive ESD preparedness at a fully assembled board manufacturing plant, they are going to be few and far between.  When you're the schmuck on the Dell assembly line putting together the machines, do you think they have elaborate ESD precautions?  Why is that... because  the fully assembled boards are not nearly as ESD sensitive as the 1980's would have you believe. 

Having begum my electronics career in the 1980's, the full fear of god against ESD is still with me; I habitually touch grounded items before doing anything with electronics. I have been trying to break myself of that irrational fear for years, but it's pretty damned ingrained and habitual... however, the last time I killed a device through ESD was somewhere around 1987.  It was a Checkmate memory board for an Apple ][gs and I killed a couple of the DIP chips I was trying to put in there.  Beyond that, even grounding myself out through numerous modern PCBs, I have yet to see a dead/damaged board in recent memory.  I haven't even HEARD of anyone legitimately damaging a board.

Modern boards are also surprisingly resilient when it comes to liquid, although I am certainly not denying the dangers of liquid around electronics, but having water cooled my machines for around a decade now, I've had my share of leaks.  I have yet to kill a board with liquid either... even ran a SoundBlaster Audigy for 2 years after it was nearly submerged in water while turned on... had a ton of corrosion all over the place, but it happily went about it's merry way until I upgraded to a PCI-e SB. 

So yeah, I'm not taking anything away from you or devaluing your work or career, I am just saying that the modern terror of ESD and electronics damage is overblown to the extreme and a relic of an era where it was a real issue.

ESD aside... having that coffee cup poised for a suicidal plunge into the murky inner world of someone's $29,000 investment doesn't really seem like a best practice. Just guessing here, but while I can channel lightning through my USB ports (cool! I learned something today...) and power my iPhone with St. Elmo's fire, having 12 ounces of slightly acidic, sticky, syrupy hot liquid suddenly meet with a circuit board, spinning fans and a non-grounded Midwestern hottie seems like a bad idea. And I'm going to get enough dog fur, dust mites and stray fasteners into the guts of my hardware without them arriving loaded up already. There are levels of "Clean" that should be at least a minimum standard, and that damn coffee cup should be in a break room.

Don't do this Inaba, I have nothing but respect for you. But to claim that ESD is a non-issue is just...

It can take less than 50v to blow or severely weaken a transistor junction. A person cannot generally "feel" a ESD until it is around 3000v. Just because one can do the balloon dance with a retail level GPU card and have it still work, does not mean one has not weakened any of the internal components of the IC's.

Most ESD failures are not immediate and can show up as shortened lifespan or intermittent issues until complete failure.

Yes, IC's these days are designed with safeguards to try and protect the internal circuitry, but they are by no means foolproof. If you were to visit other electronics assembly plants, you would see that ESD protocols are taken very seriously. It is not a "boogeyman", it is a fact of life.


Calling me an "armchair" EE or troll?? Come on Inaba, you are above that. I showed a genuine concern, about what appears to be a problem with normal industry protocol.

I really do not know what else to say, I really have nothing else to add to the thread. I have stated what I felt needed to be said and now sit disappointed.

16 years as an EE, working in and out of the electronics industry, I have seen many crazy things. But after this post I am left speechless.

Haha I was like wtf?!

I will take that bet.  Please let me know how much you want to bet, I will cover any bet you care to name.

So... put your money where your mouth is before further sounding like an idiot.  I propose we go with 1000 BTC to start, what say you?  We can pick a neutral escrow agent that we both agree upon.  If you want to bet more, just name your amount and I'm in.

How fucking dumb are you?

Edit: This was meant for ElectricMucus