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| Your Case Is Made To Be Destroyed! | ||||
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Question:
Answer:
This is precisely
why we call Star Cases the “Ultimate in PRODUCT Protection.”
Our cases are
designed and built to protect their contents – your expensive and
often irreplaceable equipment, products, works of art, fragile
electronic devices, etc. However, your case is expected to get
dirty, dented, scraped, scratched and gouged. Our primary concern
is the well being of your equipment. After all, isn’t that why you
purchased your Star Case(s) in the first place? Failure (damage) at
a given point is highly desirable, especially if it occurs after
forces exceed that which is expected or anticipated. Failure of the
package around your equipment will typically dissipate and absorb
the trauma to such an extent as to reduce or eliminate any damage to
your payload. The alternative is to have a case that simply won’t
“give” when forces become too extreme. The result is a container
that doesn’t “give” under undo stress and thus a container that
transmits the “normal & expected” forces to the contents therein
(Not a good idea!).
Our cases are
built in strict conformance to the ATA (Air Transport Association)
specification 300, category 1 testing procedures that simulate 100
common carrier (air, land and sea) shipments. All “normal &
expected” rough handling environments were taken into consideration
when the ATA first evolved this specification and established its
vibration test, drop test and moisture tests criteria guidelines.
Granted, a
specification is only as good as the guideline testing from which it
was established. The ATA specification calls out “real world”
scenarios such as:
The testing
performed does not cover damage that might be incurred following:
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These are what we
refer to as the exceptions, not the rule. A customer once asked me,
after an unfortunate incident involving a truck roll-over accident
and subsequent damage to his Star Case, “can’t you build me a case
that is ‘guaranteed’ not to break?” My answer was, “sure, but you’d
never be able to lift it because I’d have it build it out of 2”
thick pig iron or some exotic titanium metal and secondly you’d
never be able to afford it because to custom build just one of these
would incur a cost many times the value of the payload you intend to
ship.”
So, you ask, what
is the solution? Here’s what we do at Star Case, and have done
successfully since our inception in the early 70’s. We design
and build our cases as compactly as possible without sacrificing
protection for your payload.
We design and build our cases to “give” at a certain level of stress such that the case will fail in a progressive fashion from the outside in such a way that your payload will remain safe and protected to the absolute last minute. After all, what good is a protective shipping case if IT survives the exaggerated mishandling (handling that exceeds what the ATA deems to be “normal & expected”) and the case contents doesn’t survive? That reminds me of an advertising theme I saw once in an industry publication. Pictured in the ad was a large shipping case laying on it’s side at the foot of a theatrical stage. A gentleman was standing next to the case with his leg wrapped in a cast and bandages wrapped around his head.
I think he was
supported on crutches as well. At any rate, there was a
caption next this fella’s head that read something like this:
“While setting up for a stage production, I had to climb inside this
case to retrieve some items that were out of reach. All of a
sudden, the case that was teetering on the edge of the stage fell,
with me in it, to the concrete floor 5’ below. I’m so glad we
decided to ship our valuable equipment in "XYZ cases" – just look
how well it survived a 5’ drop from this stage!”
So, what’s this
guy saying? In essence - the case should survive extreme trauma but
to heck with the contents? He, after all, was the contents and how
well did he survive? Not very well as the ad clearly presented!
At Star Case, we’ve taken a different philosophy. Our cases are designed and built to be damaged and possibly, even destroyed! Needless to say, we focus on protecting the contents in the Star Case.
This is precisely why we take extreme pride in touting the fact that we offer thoroughly ATA compliant shipping cases. Every type and grade of ATA case we build has been tested (with payloads) by independent testing laboratories to all the testing procedures called out in the ATA specification 300, category 1. Performance of these tests does not come cheaply – believe me, they cost dearly. And, the majority of our competitors in the heavy duty shipping case industry simply claim that they are ATA compliant and have no substantiation to back it up (they haven't spent the money in testing to prove their cases can survive the stringent ATA criteria, like we have, ask for proof of a Test Report. To compare please visit:
http://www.starcase.com/starfactstests.html
to review our results). Just ask yourself, if it wasn’t a
federal law that all manufacturers of electrical devices being sold
on the U.S. open market be UL (Underwriters Laboratories) rated,
don’t you think most (if not all of them) would forgo these very
expensive product submissions and subsequent tests?
Unfortunately, the
ATA specifications are merely guidelines established by the Air
Transport Association to establish criteria for rating the
airworthiness and level of shipping strength of various types of
shipping containers. Testing to their parameters and suggestions is
a requirement only to the commercial airline industry (spare parts,
avionics, oxygen bottles, etc.) and not a requirement for the rest
of us. When selecting your next ATA compliant shipping cases be
sure to think about what we’re saying here. In the following order
of preference, when arriving at your
trade show site, your product demonstration, sales meeting, field
assignment or other destination:
Your
case and all contents arrived safely and in-tact.
·
This
is the preferred, and most common, scenario.
Your
case and contents arrived safely however the case was a bit worse
for wear.
·
This
is the preferred, but after time, a common scenario.
Your
case arrived damaged, however the contents were in perfect working
order.
·
In the
real world, this scenario occasionally happens. Be satisfied you
spent your hard earned money wisely in that your case performed to
such an extent as to render your contents undamaged.
The
case and contents were badly damaged. · Sometimes, in transit, 3rd floor building drops, floats down raging rivers, or non-caring forklift operators take over and there’s nothing short of titanium and 6” of foam that will change the outcome.
NEVERTHELESS, STAR CASES are very, very cheap insurance, indeed!
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