Peanuts and Bubblewrap alert!

Hello all!

I just learned something very interesting from a very nice UPS person that whose business is packages. She told me that when you ship electronic gear, you should always pack it in pink or green peanuts and/or pink bubblewrap. You should NEVER use white peanuts of clear bubblewrap. They have a tendency to build up a static charge, and could damage the sensitive equipment.

I thought it was very interesting info!

 

It would be interesting to find out the ingredients in these 2 different colored versions of the same thing. If they're chemically the same, hogwash! If not hmmmm.

 

It is, but the grade of poly-plastic material is slightly different. George is correct... The foamy white stuff builds up enough static charge to kill a RAM chip on SODIMMS and other computer RAM, motherboards and modems.

Then there's the made-with-real-corn peanuts. Those are totally safe and disintegrate under sunlight and water. They melt like a cheezy poof, but don't eat it. That stuff is safe, but used rarely these days because plastics are stronger and can be reused.... But it takes 50 years for complete breakdown, depending on type...

It still baffles me that our un-reuseable trash hasn't overwhelmed the earth. Where the hell is the Mr. Fusion for the car??

 

Excuse my dumbassedness here Sckott, but from your description wouldn't they in fact be chemically different then? Different grading = different composition??

 

Yes, and in the way it's manufactured as well. I've seen tiny squares of nylon, puffed up to resemble "peanuts" when I ordered from Angela Instruments.

Peanuts don't have to be static-electricity resistant though. Some of the pink ones I've had have stuck to my clothes like mad. I've had hardware dealers send me a motherboard using white peanuts, and as long as they've shipped with the ribbed bags, I've never had a problem.

Depending on what you're shipping, the odds of you killing a component because of the peanuts you use is SLIM.

 

Hey! No talking about cables on this thread!

 

Dave's been a bad boy today!

 

I was talkin' about the mastering of the peanuts! Sheesh!

Are there any UD2 peanuts available Sckott?

 

If there are, yer not going near them, are you?

Seriously, the easiest thing to pack is use newspaper, self-molding foam-in-a-bag, pillows, certain bubble wrap and you should ALWAYS use ribbed or polarized baggies for shipping RAM or other electrostatically-ssssensitive products on the inside. Never had a CPU or stick'o Ram go because of how it's shipped. I've had whole ASUS motherboards, several of them shipped with the most static-y annoying peanuts. Even the cat's covered in em - and the board is OK.

Tubes, just box em with lots of bubble wrap!

 

Whenever I ship electronics or speakers using peanuts, I ALWAYS wrap the unit itself in sealed plastic, such as a garbage bag, if the unit is not housed in plastic in it's original box. All of the peanuts can disintegrate and the micro-dust can get inside pots, voice coils, transformers, etc and cause damage.

 

Mr Fusion is a prisoner of his own design...Never to make an appearance in our lifetime...Gone the way of every other energy efficient idea...