how to ground myself please?

closed

open case, blow or wipe the dust from the bottom, close case. If the PSU fan is covered in dust/fluff, stick the vac on it for a second from the outside

done in 30 seconds, no fuss.

A little dust here and there is harmless - strange that people go to great lengths to clean pc's and laptops with stupidly expensive cans of air, and now antistatic wrist straps, and leave all other electrical equipment in the house untouched.

spannerzone

sk240 wrote: »

Don't use a vacuum cleaner to clean out the case, the amount of static that is created with the air flowing over a plastic tube is huge.Use compressed air as it does a much better job, leave it plugged in so that is at ground and ground yourself by holding onto a metal piece of the case.

Finally, someone has explained the real reason to not use a vacuum cleaner!!

The chances are you could use a vacuum cleaner and never have any issues but one day you could be unlucky and kill a component

DevCoder

Static discharge via plastic vacuum nosel versus earth potential differences of grounding yourself against a different earth than the chassis.

Only one way to decide Fight!

Seriously though, Ive only killed one component in 24 years of handling components in the IT industry (I may well have shortened the life of some, but unless you measure before.after you cant tell and reducing life expectancy from 10 years to 5 years doesnt matter even in a commercial setup where depreciation on hardware fixed assets is 5 years anyway)

I'd be far more concerned in connecting my wrist to an earth that is either diy wired (really really dont recommend the previous posters advice on this) or doesnt offer line->Earth or lost neutral fault tolerances.

Quickest way to ensure you are grounded six foot under.

Guardsman

The wifes decision on what vacuum cleaner to have is heavily influenced by the size and colour.
Us men just stick our hand over the nozzle.

spratley

I use a cheap bellows type footpump - wait for a dry day (could be some time), take the PC outside, open case & give it a good blow out. Just direct the nozzle into all the various crannies.No need to buy a can of air and good excercise, too !

johnnyboyrebel

Grounding yourself to open up a pc? You really don't need to worry, I have never yet felt the need to do this and have been inside thousands of machines over the years.

Kernel_Sanders

Lifeforms wrote: »

I by and by, never really understood how people can not wire a plug. Blue is left, brown is right

You know those wiring diagrams that are often slotted over the pins? They show blue on the right, brown on the left. Now, imagine some technically challenged person slipping that off, then referring to it whilst working on the other side of the plug without realizing.....