EMIT - Questions And Answers

We are involved in the re-building of a company damaged by a major fire. They are very ESD aware. They are having us epoxy coat the floor of their manufacturing facility, and we have the option of using a standard two part epoxy,and them maintaining it with an ESD wax, or using graphite based ESD epoxy. (which is much more costly to purchase and apply) Although, when you factor in the long term maintenance it seems to be the appropriate road to take. I would appreciate any insite you could give me on this, so we can make a more educated decision. –Anonymous, South San Francisco, CA

My first thought is to mention that ESD epoxy based floors, even graphite based ones commonly go out of spec after a period of time and need to be maintenance with an ESD floor wax to cut down on tribocharging as well as increase the conductivity of the floor.

From an experienced floor guy, I have the following advice:

Reasons not to go Epoxy way:=====================
1. Electricals tend to go out after time
2. Epoxy floors are never consistently dissipative throughout the surface of the floor.
3. Epoxy gets damaged (scratched/gouged) easily by moving equipment, pallets or floor-trucks/pallet-jacks and are expensive to repair.
4. Once repaired they never look the same as you have patch work through out the floor. This too causes different electrical potentials.Paint is way more economical, very easy to repair and restores electrically and esthetically when scratched or gouged. My suggestions would be to use either conductive tile such as the vinyl conductive tiles, which are volume loaded and come with a life-time guarantee or use a conductive paint such as Statproof® Conductive Paint, in lieu of an epoxy-based floor.

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