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I use http://www.smitherspira.com/ for our box testing, I’ve been very happy with their testing, and also their ability to provide feedback to our box manufactures for packaging improvements. For instance, we took a box design from our box manufacture, tested it and it performed well in all except the corner drop test ( unacceptable G’s ), and they gave is great input to go back to our box people with specific design changes ( a tweak to the form layout ).
BTW, one of the tips from our box people, which disappointed me personally, was to avoid high % or recycled material in the box cardboard. The more times it has been recycled, the shorter the fibre length, and the less inherent strength in the material. So higher recycled content, less impact resistance for equivalent thickness and walls. I want to be as green as possible, but unfortunately you can’t ship sheet metal boxes in high recycled content cardboard !
Having said that, like you, I have also shipped product from one side of the country and back, just to make sure everything was OK, and to give confidence in the design.
Hey @Andy4us yea check out the test we did in our KS update. We failed the first time but passed the second time. The box takes a beating but nothing like what we saw when shipping to actual customers.
Here’s the official update on this topic. Phil has just sent me a proposed schedule and we are going through it now to think through it a bit before publishing.
I’m going to be interested to see the pictures of damage. My gut tells me on the KS Update link is that you need an additional foam "band around the middle to help reduce flex of the box in the middle, or drop in foam pads. A couple of the products we resell that are probably about the same weight and size as a Carvey have 4 of these http://www.allenfield.com/packaging.asp?cid=1&prodID=2162 . The UPS and Fedex drivers use them a lot.
That has a cardboard tub the product sits in, 5 walls, sides and bottom, and then a cardboard top of 4 sides and top drop on, and the handles go through the double side thickness to help look it all together. Everything is double walled cardboard, so 4 thickness on the sides in effect.
For fastening loose items, or for doors, the fiber reinforced packing tape works well and is very popular on many of the items that we resell.
With the resulting crack on the front. The front was getting loaded with the full impact of the force when dropped off the back of the truck we assume.
We think the cross bracing is more evenly distributing the force and the straps are giving the driver the option to carry it instead of shoving it off the back of the truck.
hmm so the whole wasteboard moves on that machine? (i havent look into the carvey to much sorry)
but so if the x rails are supported on the end what supports them in the center sense the x carriage is sitting in the middle? now I may have this wrong but all your support relies on the 2 metal rods the carriage slides on seems if it was pushed all the way to one side and a rigid foam spacer from wasteboard to carriage was installed
actually looks like you have some space front and back of the wasteboard so really you could spread the load out even more so you are transferring loads directly to the wasteboard
I am just spit balling here because I thought i heard in one of the updates that if alot of force was applied to the x carriage something was going wrong with it in your tests but I might be wrong
and your major goal of this was to have no assembly required for the end user correct? as far as the packaging goes anyways
ok ok I was looking at the pictures more and i see the problem with the x carriage it got shifted to one side I wonder iof there are holes on the inside of the left or right of the machine that a simple zip tie could go through instead of using all that foam on the rail with zip ties (zip ties are expensive lol) so with it shifted all the way to one side and zip tied with only 2 or 3 ties and a small amount of foam could in theory eliminate a few of those ties in the current config and save you some money
hmm i know one problem with zip ties is that they are hard plastic and with alot of vibration that does not mean good things for paint either I am sure your shipping these machines overseas correct?
You may still get into trouble with the front. You’re just going to have to see. The cross brace will help strengthen the foam when there is an impact the side that the front faces, it will help stop the right hand side ( of your picture ) from compressing back and passing a force onto the front cover.
However, if just dropped from a truck onto that side, the inside part of the foam has to deform to provide the deceleration of the Carvey. It could be that the foam was not compressing, but twisting slightly to decelerate the Carvey when you put it into testing. By adding the braces, you could affect that movement.
On one product, we ended up adding a second strip of slightly less dense foam against the product to bring the deceleration G’s down to an acceptable level.
Like EMC testing, I’ve learned that box design is 50% engineering and 50% voodoo with a healthy sprinkling of testing thrown in.
I know you needed to solve an immediate problem, and it looks like you did a good of investigating that and providing fixes to what you had. If possible though, I would definitely recommend a trip back to the lab if your box manufacture can’t also do some basic testing, do an analyses of affected tests, and at least rerun those tests.
I once stood in a 10 foot shelving throwing the box as hard as I could to the floor to try and figure out a power supply bracket issue we had. Life can be tough sometimes !
Thanks @ontheEDGE and @Andy4us. @ontheEDGE when we added the second row of foam it seems to have solved the problem since we distributed the load more evenly.
@andy4us I’m afraid you are correct. All we can do now is ship more units and play the waiting game. We haven’t had a failure with this new style so I’m optimistic. However, I can say with certainty someone will have a damaged package. We’ve had MakerSlide come back to us in an L shape.
Wow!! L shaped huh if I was in your position I would be furious those are the sorta things that can make or break a small business such as yours
I personally like that you personally get on here every day and talk with customers lol dont ever lose that the bigger you get
I am not even a carvey customer but I was checking out the kickstarter page and all the updates look extremely truthful and in depth that would keep me any day as a loyal customer for furture things to come
I always dream about working for a company like yours where inovation is the main goal
I am glad everything is getting sorted out if I can be of any help just let me know
I can see these types of things happening. Last year I had a bandsaw delivered from Ups freight and I watched the driver literally kicking and dropping other grizzly and powermatic power tool boxes out of the way. It was a little mind blowing.
Thanks for your reply, I don’t know if the damage is intentional or not but it hurts. Hopefully everything will be solved and I will get my Carvey soon.
It’s getting much better. The international shipments arrived without a scratch. Ironically one of the Chicago shipments had damage to the acrylic.
It seems like 90% of the problem is fixed but that last 10% is proving difficult to mitigate against. UPS corporate has launched an investigation internally to see what is going on. We’ll see what comes of that. So far I think it just upset the driver that picks up the packages from the factory. Looking at the damage I think it is happening at the distribution center rather than on the truck.
For the people that are getting them delivered from UPS without issue we are getting wonderful feedback. People LOVE Carvey. We’re getting some twitter love too from backers and this one from Fin is bonkers.
My internationally shipped Carvey havent given me so much love yet as I would like to love it.
It arrived three days ago with a cracked acrylic front, homing did not work, it spun on the gears(?) and didnt move, only made a terrible noise, had to press “Home” and listen to it going on for like 20 times until it finally moved. Cut the first piece and dust keeps coming out of it (two 5.3mm gaps on each side of the closed hatch). The bit also broke, and finally: The on/off button doesn’t work either
