Packaging / Foam expertise

[MossRoad]

We often got crates with shock sensors on them. Rarely were they not tripped. We'd make note of it, contact the vendor for approval to unpack, then proceed. Rarely was the item damaged.

 

[WinterDeere]

In this case, the item is relatively impervious to shock loads. There are some .125" thick aluminum mounting ears on the chassis, which could be bent if they suffered an impact, but the arrangement of foam around each item in the box will prevent that from happening due to normal in-transit shock loads. The rest of the assembly could likely be dropped off a building without damage, assuming it didn't land on one of the input or output connectors.

Twice in my career, I've had a customer or shipper drop one of our large systems off a loading dock. I remember one in particular totally sheared the welds and fasteners on the double-wide 19" rack into which it was built, leaving the whole rack look like a leaning parallelogram. Because that customer was overseas and we knew it would be months to get a new rack shipped out there with a technician to transplant all the hardware, we told the customer to just try powering up the system. Surprisingly, it all worked just fine! I think they ran that leaning tower of amplifiers for 3-4 months, prior to us coordinating a repair, with the customers usage schedule.

 

[dstig1]

We have a small group of packaging engineers at work. Depending on what they are working on they can do shaker tests, drop tests, corner impacts, etc. The shaker tables can be programmed for everything from "UPS domestic ground shipping" to MilSpec blah blah and everything in between. They have pallet sized versions of those and some small ones.

A lot of times their findings are about quality stuff. Like one product after their shipping cycle it was wearing a hole in the bottom of the bag where there was a bit of a sharper edge, so they added a small cardboard or foam bit there to solve that so customers didn't open it to a hole in the bag. It was a storage bag in addition to shipping protection, so we wanted it to be in good shape.

And yes, i am aware i did not answer your question

 

[PJSprog]

When I worked at St. Louis Music, we packed almost all of the Ampeg, Crate, Crate Pro Audio, and Audio Centron stuff with Instapak inserts made in a mold to fit each unit (like the one pictured below). It was a vacuum forming mold (we literally used a modified shopvac) with the two-part spayed in, close the lid, and let it expand for a few seconds. Open it up, trim off the edges with a sharp knife, and start another one. We shipped everything from light weight single rack space preamps to 70 & 80 pound SVT-IIPro & SVT-CL tube amplifiers. That stuff held up great.
(pic from the Instapak website)

The lighter weight rack gear was easy because we just made one piece that fit either side, made in a multi-unit mold. I probably have one around here somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and take a pic.

During my time at Masterclock, we teamed up with a local packaging company to develop what we needed. Their engineers came up with some pretty crafty cardboard origami inserts to protect those expensive clocks and displays. If you have a packaging supply place nearby, that may be an option, too.

 

[MossRoad]

When I worked at St. Louis Music, we packed almost all of the Ampeg, Crate, Crate Pro Audio, and Audio Centron stuff with Instapak inserts made in a mold to fit each unit (like the one pictured below). It was a vacuum forming mold (we literally used a modified shopvac) with the two-part spayed in, close the lid, and let it expand for a few seconds. Open it up, trim off the edges with a sharp knife, and start another one. We shipped everything from light weight single rack space preamps to 70 & 80 pound SVT-IIPro & SVT-CL tube amplifiers. That stuff held up great.
(pic from the Instapak website)
View attachment 4783681

The lighter weight rack gear was easy because we just made one piece that fit either side, made in a multi-unit mold. I probably have one around here somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and take a pic.

During my time at Masterclock, we teamed up with a local packaging company to develop what we needed. Their engineers came up with some pretty crafty cardboard origami inserts to protect those expensive clocks and displays. If you have a packaging supply place nearby, that may be an option, too.

That's the stuff we'd get a lot of equipment in at my old job. My current employer orders light fixtures in bulk. They come on 4'x 4' x 4' pallets in a box with that stuff laid in all around them.

 

[WinterDeere]

For anyone else packing stuff, you can buy that material in pre-loaded bags now, with the two parts in separate bladders within the same bag. All you need to do is kneed the bag to rupture the two internal bladders and mix the material. I use a lot of them, in my business, as it's less messy and usually more convenient than having the old gun and hose system around.

Check out InstaPak, if you want to see the most popular version of this product.

However, in the case of these assemblies being like a stack of flat table tops (i.e. 50 pieces of deep 1U rack chasses), spray foam becomes a much less attractive option, as it would cause the boxes to bulge out on the broad face. I think I can get away with cardboard alone for the large faces, with sheet foam around the perimeter.