Dear Experts,
would like to ask if it is necessary to conduct qualification for footwear/flooring say we have qualified the material at one site and will apply to the other site. the condition is that the RH and temp settings was the same for two sites.
thanks in advance.
Rose25,
That is a good question. I will take a stab at the answer but I hope John chimes in if he disagrees or has some better insight.
Since the testing for footwear/flooring per ANSI/ESD STM97.1 and STM97.2 are typically done in a laboratory environment to get the required relative humidity (RH) and temperature levels, I don’t see why you couldn’t use the testing information from a different facility as long as you are using the same footwear and flooring from the same manufacturers and the minimum RH at the tested facility is the same or higher at the new facility.
You would still need to have evidence that the minimum annual RH at the new facility is the same or higher than the RH at the other facility where the testing was done.
If you have the equipment to do the testing at the new site, you should consider doing them at least as a sanity check to make sure the results are within the ANSI/ESD S20.20 limits for footwear/flooring and are as you expect. You wouldn’t need to do all the data recording as you would to show for product qualification, but it would give you the peace of mind that the results match your expectations. Thanks
Andy got it right. The important thing is to ensure the floor and the footwear combinations are the same. Document the RH at both site to ensure the testing was done at the lowest level RH. A check of body voltage at both site would be recommended but the formal qualificaiton document can be used for both sites.
If the footwear differs, then of course testing to that combination needs to be done.
Dear Andy and John,
thank you very much for the clarification. Surely these give us a clear understanding of the requirements and what would be better in terms of compliance and protection as well on our ESDS device given the available resources and information that we have.
thank you very much.