Electrostatic dissipative garment with interchangeable elastic bands

Abstract

An electrostatic discharge (ESD) garment having a pair of sleeves (10) which provides elastic contact between the wrists of a wearer and said sleeves (10), wherein each of said sleeves (10) comprising of a pair of attachment means (12) provided on the sleeve in such a manner that it creates a space gap (14) provided in between the attachment means (12) for receiving an elastic wrist band (11) looped thereon to enable the formation of a pocket when said sleeve (10) is folded with proper alignment to enable said first attachment means (12a) attached and hold together with said second matching attachment means (12b).

Description

FIELD OF INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to a static dissipative coat-like outer garment, more particularly to an ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) smock which provides excellent and reliable static dissipative and contamination protection.BACKGROUND OF INVENTION[0002]A static dissipative or ESD smock is commonly used in electronic devices manufacturing environment to drain static charges from the operation personnel. It is also important that such ESD smock ideally be groundable so as to enable any static charge that may be floating or residing on the ESD smock generated through the personnel's movement or transferred from the inner clothing by static charge induction be drained away when the ESD smock is grounded. The pathway in which these electrostatic charges are drained from the ESD smock can be through a groundable point strategically located a certain spot or area of the smock as highlighted in U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,469 or through sleeve collar of such ESD smock as hi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]The present invention consists of a replaceable elastic wrist band that can easily attach and remove from the sleeve of a smock with the helps of a pair of attachment means preferably a pair of Velco tapes. The objective is to extend the durability and usable shelf-life of an ESD smock to achieve economic advantage and commercial attractiveness.

[0020]Alternatively in the second embodiment, an additional piece of flap is sewn onto the sleeve in such a way to allow formation of a pocket to enclose the elastic band. Thus various sizes of the elastic rubber band can be easily placed into the pocket and simply sealed-up by the Velco band at ease. This simple design also ensures that the rubber band can be easily replaced as and when needed, eliminating the need to replace the complete ESD smock thereby achieving attractive cost saving in daily real-life use.

[0021]The invention achieves an easy-to-manage automatic fail-proof compliance system. Once the correct size of the elastic band is chosen for a worker, there is no further or special instruction to him / her is required. Workers just put on the smock and use. That's all. This solves the problem of the needs to have more monitoring and control over the worker's body-to-ground grounding system and simplifies ESD control procedure. This invention is especially useful in a labour intensive assembly operations in a typical electronics manufacturing industry.

Problems solved by technology

However, when the band is loosen due to “deform” from continuous stretching during daily use, periodic laundering & heat drying, etc. the whole smock need to be replaced due to intermittent failure or lost in electrical contact at the cuff.

However, if the worker “forgets” to snap on the metal snap, body to ground system fails.

However, if the worker “forget” to snap on the snaps together, body to ground system fails.

As rubber elastic bands tend to deteriorate and loosen overtime.

When this happened, the smock is no longer effective in its electrical contact with the wearer especially in a dry relative humidity assembly manufacturing environment.

This will result in non-reliable ESD protection as the pathway for charge drainage is now intermittently broken.

Apart from that, when the sleeve collar becomes loosen, there might be tendency for foreign contaminants to fall off from the inner clothing or the body of the personnel and contaminate the electronic work assembly area.

This problem further compounded when the smock is repeatedly worn by a person with a relatively larger wrist size and later worn by a person with a smaller wrist size.

On top of that, persons wearing the same size smock can be very different sizes in their wrist lines, causing unwanted logistic problem in distributing the right sized ESD smock to the personnel in a labour-intensive electronics manufacturing environment.

The key factor in this problem is that it will not be known when this failure in sleeve contact will happen.

This makes the current smock design very unreliable as such failure can occur anytime during the production operation.

Putting in a continuous monitoring system of the ESD protection of the smock will further dramatically increase the operation cost of a highly competitive and cost conscious electronics assembly operations.

However, this will only serve to prolong the lifespan of the rubber band and it is not an effective solution to the problem.

The uncertainty of failure occurrence is still prevalent especially in dry relative humidity environment and those operation personnel or wearers with dry skin.

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