ESD mat vs. plain bench mat after 2 months of phone board work

Started doing more microsoldering on iPhone boards back in April. I was using a plain silicone mat from my old bench. Then a customer's board kept acting up randomly after I replaced a charging IC. Reflowed it twice, checked all my joints with a loupe, still intermittent. Finally borrowed a friend's proper ESD mat with a wrist strap grounding point. Same rework, no issues after. Turns out my dry climate in Denver was generating enough static to kill the IC slowly. Swapped out all my mats last week. For $40 extra it was worth it. Has anyone else dealt with static issues that only show up on certain boards?

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jade2262mo ago

Well, that's just the universe's way of telling you to stop being cheap! I've seen this exact thing happen with a guy in Arizona who swore his dry heat was innocent, then his boards started dying left and right. Static is a sneaky little monster, it doesn't show up on every board, only the ones that have just the right mix of sensitive chips and bad luck. Your story is a perfect example of why I always tell people to just buy the proper mat the first time, because debugging a ghost issue like that will eat up way more than $40 of your time. Glad you figured it out before you lost that customer, because intermittent static issues are the worst kind of nightmare.

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