Static electricity and DCC

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I am in a wheelchair. My layout room is also carpeted (bad judgement there). As a result, I can wheel into the room and watch the spark fly as I touch something grounded. I am considering a piece of grounded metel near the command station that I can discharge myself on before beginning operations. Any thoughts on this?

2

Grounding yourself to discharge static electricity buildup before touching anything related to your DCC system and/or layout is an excellent thought. We have carpeting in our clubhouse here in the Arizona desert and I have been zapped several times when touching the track. It has raised havoc with our DCC controller LAN several times, and in one instance destroyed the microchips in a controller. Static electricity and DCC don’t play well together at all.

3

THERE ARE Industrial floor mats to prevent static electrical discharge - sold to micro chip industry.

Cheaper is a metal ground - and metal handled tool - to ‘de-Zap’ your self. (Say a grounded copper surface to work on.

Static electricity is a combination of dry climate, wintertime, and wool or nylon (non cotton)carpeting, generating an extremely hi voltage / low current potential, with you acting as a capacitor.

4

good ide a. i had to di that whe n I used foamm fir a layoutg base.

5

Bruce,

You are absolutely right: ESD can play havoc with any sensitive electronics, DCC included. So yes, safely getting rid of the static is a good idea.

However, there are more ways of getting rid of it than touching a grounded object. You may want to consider an anti-static spray or treatment for your carpeting. That way you don’t have to take an action, which you could on occasion forget, in order to dissipate the charge.

Oh, and by the way, I don’t think carpeting in the layout room is a bad idea at all.

HTH,
Steve

6

Bruce, as one who used to fight static electricity for “Big Blue” computer company, some suggestions:

  1. Create a grounding point on your layout ( a copper wire awg16 or larger ) connected to your building electrical ground. Connect your wheel chair to this grounding point with a short piece of wire with an aligator-clip on each end. DO NOT WORK ON ELECTRICAL DEVICES WITH POWER ON WHILE YOUR CHAIR IS CONNECTED TO THE GROUNDING POINT! We don’t want you electrocuted.

  2. Most computer/office supply houses sell an anti-static spray to spray carpet — has to be done regularly.

  3. Increase the humidity in your train room — while many complain about humidity, keeping it up around 50% plus will greatly reduce the static problem. When the air gets cool and dry, static becomes a serious problem with electronic devices.

In my former job all of us had to use metal wrist bands hooked to short wires attached to the equipment we were working on to eleminate distruction of the chips and cards we were replacing in the computers we were working on.

Hope this gives you some ideas ----------

John T

7

As I have sometimes (in dry summer) the same problem I lightly moisturize the carpet with a spray flacon and plain water. That lasts for about an hours and is handy if I move a lot betwen workbench and testtrack or layout.