Selecting a Personnel Grounding Tester

The testing of wrist straps, foot grounders, ESD shoes and other personnel grounding devices is a vital part of any ESD Control Plan. Why you ask? The human body is one of the biggest generators of static electricity, so it is important that we are kept grounded.

However, using wrist straps or foot grounders is not enough; all personnel grounding devices have a finite lifetime, we need to know when its lifetime ends causing the person to be no longer grounded. Per IEC TR 61340-5-2:2018, clause 5.2.4.4 Verification frequency, “A ground cord, whilst being worn, is subjected to thousands of stretch/bend cycles each day and the conductive wire(s) in the ground cord will eventually break”. The personnel grounding device could stop functioning at any point and will most likely not be visible to the human eye. This is where Personnel Grounding Testers come in, they verify the functionality of an operator’s wrist strap and/or footwear.

Now we have covered the importance of regular verification testing, we need to consider the different types of testers available, which one is right for your application and what the IEC 61340-5-1 standard tells us about personnel grounding testing.

Watch back our On-Demand Webinar as we dig deeper into this subject:

0:00 Intro and Overview

0:59 Why use Periodic Touch Testers

01:24 Personnel Grounding Requirements from IEC 61340-5-1

02:35 Overview of the best testers for your application

• 02:58 Portable Wrist Strap Tester
• 03:34 AC Outlet Analyser with Wrist Strap Tester
• 06:14 Combo Wrist Strap and Footwear Tester
• 06:34 Combo Tester X3 07:05 SmartLog Pro® Data Acquisition System
• 07:31 Calibration and Verification

08:08 Testers Overview

04:06 Question Time – Why is there no lower limit on wrist straps and why do most wrist straps have a 1 megohm resistor if there is no lower limit in the standard?

08:34 Question Time – Is there an option for touchless testing?

10:22 Contact details

Short on time, check out our Selection Chart to help you find the best ESD Wrist strap and Footwear tester for your application.