Environmental Conditions Reduce the Static Conductivity of your Skin
When skin ages essential nutrients are lost - washing the hands removes more natural oils and drying the hands removes the water normally inherent in the skin. Skin that starts out as being static conductive can climb well into the insulative range of electrical conductivity!
All wrist strap and heel strap testers rely on the skin's electrical conductivity to take the charge from the conductive fingertip test button to the termination of what you are testing (be it wrist straps OR heel straps).
Whether using heel straps OR wrist straps they RELY on the charges from your hands dissipating thru your primary grounding system! So, if your hands and wrist are dry and lack the nutrients and natural moisture that make them conductive a perfectly good ESD Wrist Strap or Heel Strap will FAIL and ESD sensitive builds? Compromised!
So Why Won't Standard Hand Lotions Work?
Check the label! Even high quality standard hand lotions may contain silicones, lanolin, Squalene (a hydrocarbon and a triterpene) and even worse . . . PARABENS. Not only do these chemicals contaminate PCB's and Clean Room Products they can interfere with soldering and cause corrosion on specific metals. Plus, they tend to build up on the conductive portion of wrist strap reducing the straps ability to dissipate the charge. Not So with HL-3408!Static Solutions HL-3408 is a static dissipative moisturizing hand and face lotion formulated specifically for use in and around static sensitive electronics. It is clean room compliant, will not effect the solderability of electronics of cause corrosion of electrical contacts.
