On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:31:56 GMT, Lancer wrote:

+ Maybe you should read Ansi standard ANSI/ESD-S20-1999. It states
+Soldering Irons should have a tip to ground resistance of less than 1
+ohm. Companies spends tons of money each year to prevent static
+damge, and that icludes insuring that everything is at the same
+potential. Including the operator and all equipment he uses. Thats
+why iron's that are ANSI rated have a third wire, the ground. It
+wasn't put there to prevent the user from being "shocked"
******

maybe you should study Coulomb's and Guass' Law and understand how
Static Charges are developed. A soldering iron sitting on a
anti-static mat plugged into the wall is not going to develope large
electrostatic charge.

What does happen is the tip of a soldering iron is in the strong field
of a time varying magnetic field. This comes from the inductance in
the heater coil. Putting the tip at ground potential will eliminate
any potential charge build up from the time varying magnetic field
from teh heater coil.

Battery operated soldering do not have time varying magnetic fields
near the tip. It will have a static magnetic field that is often far
weaker than that of a soldering iron that operates on 120VAC.

In ESD it is the rapid movement of charge that will do the damage.
Rapid movement of electric charge will result in high current in a
very shor time frame. Ampere's Law. Damage is severe when the change
in charge(Q) versus change in time(T), dQ/dT, is very small. The slow
movement of charge results in low current and therefore damage is
minimalized.

Yes repeated strikes of low level electrostatic charge can be as
damaging as one big strike of electrostatic charge movement.


james