Humidity levels

[gabagoo]

I brought my biz home after renting for 35 years and I now work in the basement which is finished all though in the winter time it is a bit cooler down here than the rest of the house. I knew humidity would be a concern and purchased this nice unit off amazon that has done a great job. The humidity in January Feb and March when the unit was off for the night would drop to about 16% or so and I would run the humidifier and get it up to 30 or 40%. My biggest fear was having to do anyting related to coroplast and running it through the laminator...plus acm as well , but all winter very few shocks and was all good.

So now it is April and I swear over a couple of days the humidity skyrocketed to about 60% which I think is OK and comfortable...maybe all the melting snow around the house adds to it.... but here is the weird thing..I am really not running the humidifier now obviously and If I run a 4 x 8 coro through the laminator which sits easily 15 feet from my computer work station..the moment I move the coro around something connected to the computer via USB starts turning on and off randomly like the electricity in the air is travelling to the PC and making trouble. I also get the same effect when running vinyl through the plotter on a longer run that probably generates static. The plotter is about 3' from the back of the PC so understandable.

Is there anything I can do to fight the static? Humidity right now is 68%.....

 

[unclebun]

It could just be that you need to replace the USB cable.

 

[gabagoo]

It could just be that you need to replace the USB cable.

Yes but it built into the keyboard...I can live with it but wonder if I am doing any harm to the PC.

 

[Gridor]

Have you tried using static string in the problem areas? I have successfully added this to various machines, benches, trolleys etc over the years with some pretty good results.

For example if this was me in my set up, I would be running 8x4 correx through my laminator, if i thought the issue was the correx running across the feed-in table i would tape (just to secure not fully cover) some across the table down to the floor giving the static somewhere to go, or if its from the laminator itself, i would use the fixings already in the machine to wind the string round and have it running across the area i thought was affected.

I actually done this on one of my H5's, ACM was very prone to static, so i connected static string to a bolt on the left of the machine by the e-stop, ran it across the 3.2m width and wound it round a bolt on the right. I set the tension of it so it hung just above the ACM as it went into the machine.

Static string has a conductor running through it, you can buy lots of different versions, string, tinsel, proper mains connect solutions. Maybe something like this would help you, I'm from the UK so can't offer you suppliers sorry.