it appears like a torture chamber for bubble wrap and cardboard. at a lab in suburban chicago, ups inc. examines new packaging designs by shaking, dropping, and smashing boxes with ferociouslooking equipment. news details this is to see what kind of packaging can survive the trip from a supplier to customer, defending the delicate products inside. from live crickets to cupcakes, products of an unbelievable variety are now dispatched by online retailers to consumers throughout the world. as the holiday shipping season stifles up, companies wanted their products to arrive safely and undamaged in the hands of the customers. however, they also demand sustainable and eco friendly materials for their packaging so they can claim of being green. furthermore, they want to reduce their costs, as well. the ups testing lab and package design help with all that, squeezing and crunching prototype packaging for about 750 businesses a year and designing inventive new boxes for an additional 50 customers. men&rsquos suits arriving at the shop wrinkled that&rsquos a task for ups&rsquo quint marini and his group of eight packaging engineers. their innovative design for a perfect suit box resolved the question by layering 10 suits on hangers in alternating directions and keeping them intact with a builtin strap. marini said that it took five months for them to design this packaging solution. first they were going to put every suit on a piece of cardboard and tag it to it. however, that didn&rsquot work. then somebody came up with this design. marini and his team took three months to make sure this design. marini&rsquos team has also designed boxes to protect fragile frosting on cupcakes, to keep pharmaceuticals at room temperature and to keep cheesecakes cold. their most busy time is in summer when companies prepare to launch new products. in general, a testing workout takes around four hours. a compression table gives boxes a 408kilogram hug. they crash about 17 times from the drop tester. they tolerate the cruelty of the bridge impact tester, which bangs into them from the sky like a karate chop. on the vibration table, they shake for two hours, which imitates a bumpy truck ride. the altitude chamber replicates flight conditions it can blow up a bag of potato chips. to demonstrate a typical test, kyle blakey, a packaging engineer, starts a pneumatic compression table. a box survives more than 400 kilograms of force, but ultimately, when blakey turns the force about 900 kilograms, the box buckles under an iron plate. other shipping companies such as fedex corp. also have similar labs. marini gets some strange requests. one supplier of reptile foods wanted to dispatch live crickets and dead rats in the same truck. marini opinionated against it the dry ice required to keep the rats from decaying would have choked the crickets. another unusual challenge was defending two forensic facial reconstructions of civil war sailors throughout a trip from baton rouge, la., to washington, d.c. experts from louisiana state university had modeled the distinctive lifesize heads from skulls got in the turret of the uss monitor once it was lifted from the ocean floor. the heads are made of soft clay and resin. they were to be uncovered at a ceremony remembrance the 150th anniversary of the ship&rsquos sinking. marini&rsquos team built a super shockabsorbing box from wood, plastic foam and cardboard for each head. source of information httpwww.therecord.comnewsbusinessarticle853429packagingengineersdesignboxes…
