SDT or Rubber: Which is Better?

Hi, I’m Dave Long from StaticWorx. What I’m going to show you right now is going to answer, I think, a question that a lot of people have in the backs of their minds. And that is what happens with a conductive floor, when I don’t wear heel straps, because in labs, tech spaces, end-user spaces like server rooms, people don’t wear these.

So what we’re going to start out with is we’re going to measure the electrical resistance of these two floors. This is a conductive vinyl floor. When I test this, I’m measuring a resistance of 3.4 x 10E5 from this probe to the groundable point. Now I’m going to move the probe to the conductive rubber floor and hit a reset button. And I’m measuring 2.0 x 10E5. So both of these floor tiles measure in the 10E5 range.

Now what I’m going to do, I’m just going to take this very simple static meter. And this needle is in the center, there’s no static electricity. And I’m going to scuff my feet. I’m going to lift my toes up off the floor and watch what happens when I do this. See that. Now I’m going to go to the rubber floor, I’m going to do the same thing. Big difference. Rubber conductive flooring does not generate as much body voltage as vinyl. In fact, it’s a factor of over 10.

So when you’re looking at flooring and you’re thinking about what’s going to happen when my people walk on the floor and they don’t have heel straps on, that’s the reason you want to gravitate towards a conductive rubber product instead of a conductive vinyl product. So resistance and body voltage don’t necessarily correlate. And I think that’s something you’ll read in many, many articles, but I’ve just shown you that today. Thank you.