{"id":4317,"date":"2016-01-26T19:47:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T08:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/01\/26\/an-electro-static-bandaid-to-protect-sensitive-lcd-displays\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T16:55:38","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T06:55:38","slug":"an-electro-static-bandaid-to-protect-sensitive-lcd-displays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/01\/26\/an-electro-static-bandaid-to-protect-sensitive-lcd-displays\/","title":{"rendered":"An Electro-Static Bandaid to Protect Sensitive LCD Displays"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After the big East Coast blizzard, the atmosphere in my ham shack became very dry. I sit in one of those desk chairs with little plastic wheels. The shack is carpeted. So when I roll from operating bench to workbench, the chair, the carpet, the dry air and I all become a kind of Van de Graaff generator. Yesterday, my hand brushed against the 16X2 LCD display on my new R2 phasing receiver. The pretty glowing numerals in that display disappeared in a small spark, never to return. <\/b>

<\/b> I swapped out another display I had, so all is well. But the repair was a pain in the neck, involving the soldering of some 16 LCD pins, so I don’t want to do it again. I consulted with Pete Juliano N6QW who told me that this kind of LCD carnage is quite common in dry environments. He said he had cured the problem by placing a small piece of Plexiglas in front of his displays. <\/b>

<\/b> This got me thinking about those static protective bags that Digikey uses when shipping many of its components. Might the material from these bags prevent the loss of another display? <\/b>

<\/b> I retrieved a couple of these bags from the garbage and did a little test:<\/b>

<\/b> First, I rolled across the shack in the chair with a small screw-driver in hand. At the other end of the shack lies my well-grounded DX-100 transmitter. I moved the screwdriver close to the metal on-off switch. SPARK! It was visible, and quite audible in the AM broadcast receiver nearby. <\/b>

<\/b> Next I taped a small piece of this material over the switch and repeated the ride in the chair. No spark. Nada. I repeated this several times and always got the same result. <\/b>

<\/b> It appears that the material in the bag helps dissipated the static discharge over a wider area, preventing the spark. I quickly taped a piece of this material over the two LCD screens in my shack. It’s not pretty, but it is temporary, and cheaper than a humidifier. <\/b>

<\/b> I’m not going to try this on the actual screens, but I do think these small pieces of material will help prevent another accidental frying of an LCD display. <\/b>

<\/b> Here is the Wiki on anti-static bags: <\/b>https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antistatic_bag<\/b><\/a>

<\/b> And here is the data sheet on the bags that I am using: <\/b>
http:\/\/documents.staticcontrol.com\/PDF\/Static_Shielding_Bag_1000_Series.pdf<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the big East Coast blizzard, the atmosphere in my ham shack became very dry. I sit in one of those desk chairs with little plastic wheels. The shack is carpeted. So when I roll from operating bench to workbench, the chair, the carpet, the dry air and I all become a kind of Van … Continue reading “An Electro-Static Bandaid to Protect Sensitive LCD Displays”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4319,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4317\/revisions\/4319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}