Many businesses and industries are involved in projects and product creation that require an environment free from additional electrical activity. From biomedical research to electronics manufacturing, you need to do everything possible to prevent any electrostatic discharge or buildup as your workforce moves around. Fortunately, there is an easy way to accomplish this: floor coatings with electrostatic discharge (ESD) protections. ESD flooring can be engineered to help prevent static from generating and compromising the integrity of a floor system and creating hazards in the workplace.
The Benefits Of ESD Flooring Is Clear:
What is ESD flooring? Simply put, ESD floors add material into the coating, usually metal particles, which cause it to become an electrical conductor, rather than an insulator. Very few types of flooring naturally have this property. Wood, concrete, plastic, even most typical resinous coatings all tend to be insulative.
Unfortunately, when the floor is an insulator, this causes an electrical buildup to happen in a person’s body instead. As they walk around, their body accumulates a negative charge – taken from the floor – which then discharges the next time they get near a conducting surface. If that conducting surface has sensitive research or an electrically-sensitive component, it’s quite possibly ruined.
Floor coatings, however, can be manufactured to act as conductors with the introduction of specific additives. ESD flooring protection maintains the same level of durability and strong surface, continues to be easily cleaned, and can be a long-lasting solution able to withstand heavy workloads for many years. ESD flooring remains appropriate for any sort of “clean room” situation where microbial contamination is minimized as well.
Electrostatic discharge flooring is also superior to most other types of anti-static flooring. Carpeting, for example, is not appropriate for many situations, particularly if you need to move machinery around. Other solutions, such as wax or vinyl tiles, are weak and will require a lot of maintenance, as well as being harder to keep sterile.
So, if your operations require protection against static discharge, floor coatings treated to prevent electrostatic discharge are your best option.
Related: Top 6 Considerations for Industrial Flooring At Your Facility
#1 ESD Flooring Installation Solutions in New England: Black Bear Coatings & Concrete
Black Bear Coatings & Concrete is the top provider of electrostatic discharge epoxy flooring in the New England area. If you are interested in an ESD epoxy flooring solution, we are your go-to concrete coatings installation team. We can go over a number of ESD flooring options to help you make an informed commercial flooring decision.
To learn how to optimize resinous floor coatings in commercial and industrial operations, contact Black Bear today. With over 30 years of combined expertise, the Black Bear team has been value-engineering longer lasting floor solutions for businesses throughout New England and the US. Take a look at completed projects for manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies. Then, contact us for a free on-site assessment to learn how Black Bear can provide compliant, durable flooring for businesses.
