Packing boxes

[emrr]

I do not mean to sound smug Doug but that packing could have been better.

My point was that this is among the best I've seen in a long while.  Which ain't saying much. 

I pack much better than this. 

The problem with the foam is that you are creating instant waste that can't be reused, other than with the exact item it was cast around. 

 

[abechap024]

does anyone know of a company that builds shipping boxes for rackmount gear? Seems like it wouldn't be too expensive to make a box within a box type design, reinforced and 19" standard rackmount could just slide right in. Seems like there would be enough of a market for it but I can't find anything.

 

[emrr]

Too many different heights and depths.  U-Line covers just about every imaginable size, and the variable height boxes work great. 

 

[sahib]

I do not mean to sound smug Doug but that packing could have been better.

My point was that this is among the best I've seen in a long while.  Which ain't saying much. 

I pack much better than this. 

The problem with the foam is that you are creating instant waste that can't be reused, other than with the exact item it was cast around.

Agreed.  And they are pretty nasty to chop to re-use too. But most unfortunate that it is the best.

I recycle all the packaging I receive. In fact the first bubble wrap I purchased in years is the one I used for the robots. I am often astounded by what people actually throw away. In the summer I was walking up to the workshop and passed a skip. There were about ten double corrugated, pretty large boxes. Brand new and unused, flat resting against the skip. These things sell for about 6-7 quids each. Of course they were immediately nationalised by me and have long been used.  I am fortunate that I have a basement to store them though.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I recycle all the packaging I receive. In fact the first bubble wrap I purchased in years is the one I used for the robots. I am often astounded by what people actually throw away. In the summer I was walking up to the workshop and passed a skip. There were about ten double corrugated, pretty large boxes. Brand new and unused, flat resting against the skip. These things sell for about 6-7 quids each. Of course they were immediately nationalised by me and have long been used.  I am fortunate that I have a basement to store them though.

I try to recycle as much as possible too. But sometimes we have to throw away some, because we'd run out of space. We cautiously put them in an open space, protect them against the rain and most of the time, they're gone the next day, so it benefits someone.
I learnt the hard way about packaging. First time I sent equipment to Canada, the gear was DOA. The graphic EQs were constructed with a front PCB and a main PCB, orthogonal to each other and interconnected with  big 0.10" Molex. Our agent opened the units and found out that the main PCB was disconnected from the front PCB. One would never have believed it could happen. Once the PCB's were reconnected, everything worked fine.
That made me reevaluate my mechanical competences and spend more money on packaging. Eventually, packaging accounted for 10% of the cost on some units!

 

[zebra50]

juffy bag. I just had to look that up as I am not familiar with that term... part of me wants to laugh at that, part of me is mad they did it, part of me is sad they did it, and part is just puzzled they would do that.

Is it not an international term? Anyway, like this...

But with an RCA77 mic in it.

It was in for repair, and I guess it would have needed it even if it wasn't broken before it was posted. How does one tell a customer that his packing is sh!t?

(We have one postman who puts everything through the letterbox, and will even fold circuit board material to make it fit through!)

Needless to say, it was sent back double boxed, immobilised in bubble warp to make sure nothing could move. I find old whiskey cartons and tubes very good for the inner box - just about the right size for mics.  Small mics get put inside rigid pipe insulation foam first.

 

[sahib]

...........I learnt the hard way about packaging. First time I sent equipment to Canada, the gear was DOA. ...........

When it comes to shipping stuff you can only do your best. I have seen things happen to shipments that are beyond comprehension. These courier guys should really be given medals. Part of my business was in modelmaking and prototyping (which also served the product design side). We once shipped a model to a customer in London. It was in a flight case. The model was sent back to us for amendments. On opening the lid all there was a pile of plastic. One thing  caught my eye. The (model) building was secured to the base by four 75mm long drywall screws. You know those black ones which are in hardened steel. They were bent by about 30 degrees. Now put one of them onto a vice, take a hammer and try to bend them. Yet four of them were bent. Imagine the impact the flight case received.

 

[hodad]

Once had  some mics shipped to me from the UAE, shoved in a poster tube with the business end of 3 or 4 of the mics sticking out of the tube.  The shipper then wrapped newspaper around the parts of the mics not inside the tube, wrapped it all up & sent it on its way.  One mic survived the trip--an old AKG dynamic shotgun, whose diaphragm is a long way from the tip of the mic.

 

[Kingston]

I find old whiskey cartons and tubes very good for the inner box - just about the right size for mics.  Small mics get put inside rigid pipe insulation foam first.

Theres a good tip, just means that one has to drink a bottle of whiskey for each shipped mic. That may or may not be a good thing depending on wife approval rate and overall health.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I find old whiskey cartons and tubes very good for the inner box - just about the right size for mics.  Small mics get put inside rigid pipe insulation foam first.

Theres a good tip, just means that one has to drink a bottle of whiskey for each shipped mic. That may or may not be a good thing depending on wife approval rate and overall health.

You beat me to that!
Now, I would just like to know if zebra does the re-skinning after or before the spirit...  ;D

 

[zebra50]

Busy week....

And of course you need a steady hand....

We must suffer for our art....  ???

 

[sahib]

Shipping a lot of mics?

 

[zebra50]

The real story is that my wife used to work for Oddbins, which was a UK high wine seller that went bust earlier this year. When they closed the shop, we cleared out all of the old whiskey boxes along with other useful stuff that would have been junked.

There were also a few tasting samples of wines and single malts that had to come home too, so we had a little dinner party for the ex staff. You can see the blue paint on some of the bottles where the auditors had written off the stock.

A sign of the times.

 

[MicDaddy]

aaaaaaand this is why I use USPS not that they're perfect but I've had my share of fun with UPS/FedEx 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM3SRG7D21Y

 

[Brian Roth]

The latest news is that FedEx and UPS are merging into one company.

It will be called Fed-Ups.

(cue laugh track....)

Best,

Bri

 

[riggler]

At work I salvage all the blocks of ethafoam that I can from server boxes, etc. I cut them square into blocks. When I need to ship something I just pick blocks that fit reasonably close enough and then wrap the goods with bubblewrap too.

Those larger server boxes are easily cut down into smaller boxes if needed!

 

[Blue Jinn]

I had some idiot send me a Fostex 80 in a box that looked like it might have been good for a pair of shoes, with one thin layer of bubble wrap, transport side down. The side of hte box split open on the way. Oh and it was shipped from Canada so he kept telling me to contact USPS re the insurance, USPS told me the shipper is the one to make the claim, so add his BS to the crappy shipping.

There is a great thread at homerecording.com analog forum about shipping. Guy from Texas (can't remember his handle at the moment) started the thread. Also, the Pacific Stereo guy at Tapeheads.net has  a good thread too. Worth checking out. I bought a 27" TV box from U-haul, some rigid insulation from Home Depot, and a half a metric ton of peanuts from the FedEx place to ship a Tascam to myself.  Cost plenty, but came in one piece.

 

[PRR]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKUDTPbDhnA

senior vice president for FedEx {said} "We’ve shared this video internally to remind everyone...." -- to check for cameras before tossing the boxes? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw-zxJI1YOo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slk6zeM4Of8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtRMO7Rdeos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGCdOmykOOg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mhz1-biEY

In college I roomed with a guy worked the UPS sorting center. Legendary stories. One guy could recognize pills in any packaging; such boxes always broke open and spilled. Generally the sort centers are chaos due to profit-driven over-loading. Sometimes there is not enough time to drop every package, but you must assume _your_ package WILL be dropped.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Sometimes there is not enough time to drop every package, but you must assume _your_ package WILL be dropped.

+1

I am currently in beta testing to finalize my recent product generation upgrade, and both beta units I shipped arrived DOA, due to one or more drops during shipping, so I'm 2 for 2. It turns out the DOA fault was just batteries coming out of their holder, despite a nylon cable tie, securing the batteries in place. The cable tie, shear rating is only 18# and I could easily snap them in two with simple flat drops from a few feet.

I came up with a fix, but it is not just the design of the pack, but the product itself, that sometimes needs adjustment.  I could probably get away with the current design 90% of the time, by just packing my product upside down, so the typical drop is pushing the batteries back down into their holder, but anything worth doing is worth doing right, so I will develop the more robust fix. I may still pack it upside down for the extra safety margin. 

A little odd that holding the batteries in place is the hard part, but this wasn't my first time to the rodeo, so the product itself is designed adequately robust.

JR

 

[PRR]

> upside down, so the typical drop is

I think this is a 60:40 game. Watch the delivery videos, sneak into the sorting center.... packages hit every which way up.

> odd that holding the batteries in place is the hard part

Modern battery gear (actually going way back), the energy storage is more mass than the energy sinks. A vacuum-tube beach radio was more than half batteries. Transistor radio used to be 1/3rd batt, but improvements in speaker magnet and transformerless circuits got the non-batt part smaller on the same batt.

It is worth noting that many-many consumer toys ship with the batts separate, sometimes in a dedicated hole in the foam. This does save inserting the batts, and easier refurb/salvage if the product does not sell quickly, but your insight is that battery mass is a shipping problem also.