We have some workers who say that the wrist strap is too short to plug into the receptacle on the ESD mat, so, they claim that it is fine to just clip the the ESD wrist strap to the mat, closer to them. Is this still in compliance with ESD standards and regulations?
The ESD mat is connected to earth ground.
I want to preface that Im not 100% certain about this, but I believe I am correct.
The mat is there to protect against unwanted static discharge, as it doesnt conduct or hold a charge. If the workers clip their wrist strap to the mat itself, any static electricity they have will not leave them and flow through the mat to the ground. So this is definitely not a good practice.
Depends on the type of wriststrap and mat. If you have access to a digital multimeter, with the strap clipped to the mat, check the resistance between the metal plate on the inside of the strap and your ground point and it should read 1 Megohm + or - 10% (Range should be 900K to 1.1M). If not, get longer cords for your wriststraps.
