Proven Durability, Proven Performance

The ESD Carpet Tile floor samples look great, and you've checked the electrical performance specifications, but are you also considering how the carpet will wear and its performance over the long haul? How can you know?

As the saying goes "Not all carpet tile is made the same", and this is an important thing to keep in mind when deciding on which esd carpet product to purchase. Every esd carpet tile worth its stuff should meet certain minimum electrostatic performance criteria. Specifications are readily available and are a standard in the industry. But some manufacturers just do the basic testing, and these results are usually tested under controlled conditions on an uninstalled flooring sample. But what about the electrical performance after the esd floor has been installed? Will the ESD floor continue to offer the level of static protection you need after several months or years of chair traffic?

View original ESD Carpet Patent

Roller Caster Electrical Test
The Roller Caster Electrical Test (CET), an essential test for conductive carpet, will tell you whether or not the carpet will retain its electrical properties after it has been exposed to a year or two of chairs rolling over the floor. Rolling casters destroy or “mash” the carbon fibers in conductive carpeting and can turn a once conductive product into an insulator. In some cases, esd carpeting can fail because the antistatic fibers are crushed by chair casters; as a result, the esd flooring offers less static protection than the living room carpet found in most people’s homes.

The static control properties of a conductive carpet should always be tested before and after the CET. The CET simulates the action of a person seated in a caster chair, rolling back and forth and moving around, and assesses delamination and edge-ravel performance. Areas where roller caster chairs are in use are the most demanding of any carpet. Again, because crushed fibers can render the static control properties useless, the CET is absolutely essential for evaluating the long-term performance of a conductive carpet.

To make the test as rigorous as possible, an unsealed seam should be cut in each sample prior to testing. In addition, each sample must be installed over a defined cushion, which dramatically increases flexing at the seams, the most vulnerable point in any carpet. The flexing action, coupled with 198 pounds (90 kilograms) weighting and 25,000 cycles of the caster chair, imparts highly accelerated fatiguing of the carpet, seams and backing. With a regular carpet, no edge ravel or delamination should be evident after 100,000 cycles. Products that can successfully withstand this grueling test usually demonstrate outstanding field performance. Poor results help identify potential problems before the carpet is installed. Because the static control properties of a conductive carpet can be destroyed by repeated wear from rolling casters, floors with conductive yarn systems should be exposed to at least 100,000 cycles (less than two years of installed use in a 24/7 mission-critical space).

The recommended requirements of ANSI/ESD S20.20. is the electrical standard endorsed by the Electrostatic Discharge Association, the international organization that sets the standards for the proper control of static electricity. With this in mind, anyone in charge of selecting a static control floor should be aware that a lifetime electrical warranty cannot be interpreted as immunity to caster rolling damage; most suppliers of computer-grade or ESD carpet do not even test for caster damage because it is specifically excluded from any warranties they provide.

The chair caster rolling test also revealed significant electrical performance weaknesses in certain types of static control carpet tiles. For example, tiles made with PVC backing fared very poorly in the test. There are several possible explanations for the inferior performance of tiles backed with PVC. First, PVC is a poor conductor. It is also possible that the tiles backed with PVC lacked other critical design features like insertion of conductive fiber in all the yarn ends of the carpet or that these PVC products were built with small denier (textile term for size) fragile conductive fibers.

Staticworx® Antistatic Carpeting is now manufactured with our exclusive, recyclable, 100% Non-PVC Staticworx® backing. The backing consists of recycled content, made from a thermoplastic polyolefin compound with a fiberglass reinforcing layer, to provide superior lamination strength and excellent stability. All with the durability clients have come to expect from every Staticworx® flooring product.

It’s the only modular carpet flooring durable enough to meet ANSI/ESD 20.20 and still function after 100,000 cycles of the Phillips chair caster test.

Staticworx® antistatic carpet tiles with our new non-PVC backing offer the same outstanding ESD protection as always.

 

Staticworx® ESD Carpet Tile : Permanent ESD Lifetime Conductivity Warranty Flooring

CONDUCTOR SERIES ESD CARPET TILE

DataWorx™ Series ESD CARPET TILE

 

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