will this metal object work for my wrist grounding strap?

I put on my wrist strap in preparation for working on a motherboard. Looking around the desk for something to attach it to that would hopefully not restrict my movement much and that the alligator clip would fit onto easily, the first thing I saw was my metal-hinged stapler. I thought "fine, that will do." Am I right? Then I just shoved the stapler into my pocket so it wouldn't fall off. Of course it's heavy enough to drag the strap toward the floor.

Not sure if you are serious or not but no... it needs to be attached to a proper ground point. At least connect it to the chassis so your at least the same potential as the motherboard.

A free standing stapler or any free standing metal object (other than the Planet) does not constitute an actual ground. If you choose to use a grounding strap ideally you need to connect it to a proven electrical ground. This is in some ways harder than it used to be since nobody builds with copper plumbing anymore so the easiest, most convenient guaranteed ground is a metal electrical appliance that has a proper 3 prong plug attached to it.

That said and only choose this at your own risk since technically it is merely anecdotal information, but I have built hundreds of PCs and am constantly messing with them to try different gear, different configurations, etc. (yes I'm a tinkerer) and I have never owned or used a wrist strap. I just make certain that before I put a hand into any electronic device, including PCs, I touch a known proper grounded object first to bleed off any static buildup in my body. I have not once ever damaged a part due to static... again, YMMV, but in the majority of cases (no pun intended) the odds are very good.

Something you may not have thought of is impedance. As has been stressed, it has to go to a proper earth through an impedance. Earth straps usually have a 1 Meg resistor in series, to bring things down gently as doing it suddenly can have adverse effects. The smaller electronics gets, tr=he more sensitive it is.

Staplers is fe c mn si alloy, with 1.5 Si.
It sucks msn

Go rather for copper or even alu.inium

Electrical conductivityis into gperioduc or kalzium ?

An ESD area needs to be created. The strap is supposed to connect to mat and mat to some building ground via a resistor.

Keep all plastic away and consider plain paper or plain cardboard. Generally static safe.

Guess you could raise the humidity level too.

It's worth knowing that the biggest static threat is YOU.

Typical situation: you walk across a carpet of long-lasting man-made fibres wearing a man-made (=plastic) shirt or sweater, made of nylon, polyester, viscose, etc. You might even have a good portion of man-made fibres in the trousers. You will generate thousands of volts in static. Have you ever had a spark jump as you're just about to touch some metal object? That's static, in you and the metal object is close to earth. There's a few pF (=1x10^-12) of capacitance in you, and 1000s of volts.

So everything has to be brought gently to ground, hence the 1 Meg resistor in every ground. The first thing should be to put on a wrist strap on you before you touch anything. But if you brought your circuit with you through the static-generating scenario mentioned above, and then directly grounded it, you'd blow your circuit away. I did that with my final year project. The technician was scared stiff of fitting the spares, with good reason. He was incompetent. So I had to write up results with a non functioning circuit. I was rescued by having prototyped the thing on Veroboard some 12 months prior, and by a new device produced by the company. Prototyping earlier was another story in itself.

I usually remove the crocodile clip from the banana plug at the end of the wrist strap cable and plug it directly into the earth connection of the mains socket (One of the benefits of the UK's mains electricity system.) Note you can't plug it into the live or neutral connections as they are shuttered off till the earth pin, which is longer on the plug, is fully inserted, so you're safe!

@business_kid

Typical situation: you walk across a carpet of long-lasting man-made fibres wearing a man-made (=plastic) shirt or sweater, made of nylon, polyester, viscose, etc.

We used to have a PDP11/45 back in the day which lived on carpet tiles. If you touched the front panel and scuffed a foot over the tiles it would reboot due to static! Solution? They used to spray the tiles with water! Good grief!

Play Bonny!

Soadyheid, your story about the PDP11/45 gave me a laugh. I was in a Research place in the early 80s. Every year the Electronics manager would put capital equipment down as needed - whether it was or not. They built up a sizeable arsenal of stuff, so he put a computer down one year, and they bought him a PDP11. Ours didn't reboot, it just sat there for years because we had no work for it really.

It's also worth mentioning that any water pipe passes as an earth. City water distribution leaks about 33% of what passes in. Dublin has got our leakage down from 50%(!) to 22%, which is good by standards. Especially here and now. We've had so much rain.

Farming is disastrous. Tillage crops can't be planted, and farmers have to mow fields, keep the cows indoors and feed them the mown grass. Some very hard decisions will have to be taken.

Then I just shoved the stapler into my pocket

the metal on the eraser end of pencil would be more convenient I think

Originally Posted by business_kid It's worth knowing that the biggest static threat is YOU. Typical situation: you walk across a carpet of long-lasting man-made fibres wearing a man-made (=plastic) shirt or sweater, made of nylon, polyester, viscose, etc.

Makes me relieved that my house doesn't have any carpet. All floor. I think it's not wood but vinyl or some other fake wood.