When they say shrink wrap, do they mean actually wrapping the entire crate in shrink wrap? This seems a bit much. Any ideas?
La chica
Any sort of self respecting shipping company will have a small station for wrapping things in saran wrap. Boxes shipped on pallets on trucks are usually wrapped in saran wrap type stuff to keep then together. Whatever shipping company to deliver your robot to should be able to handle wrapping or metal banding your crate.
We Fed Ex our crate they seem to handle the “packaging” situation really effenciantaly.
Our robot 2 years ago was left in a leaky truck outside in rainy Seattle. Needless to say, when we unscrewed the crate, water came spilling out. Thank goodness our electronics and motors were not hurt. However, much of the metal on the bot was rusted.
Last year we tarped and saran-wrapped the robot inside the crate. This year we will do 2 layers of plastic, one on the inside, and the other on the outside.
I believe the purpose of shrink-wrapping the crate this year, is to be sure it was not tampered with in anyway. I’m just wondering if FIRST will have the ability to shrink wrap at the events, for teams who are shipping to another event.
Shrink-wrapping and/or banding your crate is a new requirement by all cargo shippers. This is not unique to FIRST, it is just the first time we have had to deal with it.
It is a direct off-shoot from the idiot that FedEx’d himself from New York to Houston (or where ever it was) a few months ago. The experience made shipping companies nervous, when they realised the implications of that experience (i.e. if a person can ship themselves acrosss country without being noticed, what else could they ship?).
-dave
Well… that killed our idea of shipping the bot with one of the seniors inside so he could finish the tranny.
::Bob get out of the crate now… Dave said NO::
:yikes: