I Have a Sealed Air Instapack 900 Foam in Place system. Anyone Else?

[zebulon1]

I had access to a 901 machine at work and had been using it for shipping/packing my restorations and repairs for the past nine years. New managers have made it more difficult to access. It was a slight pain in the rear to use, only in getting the units to my work and then to the shipping/receiving department.
So, I bought one on eBay from a gal who had salvaged one from a Pack-n-Ship store. I had user maintenance experience in keeping the system operating and would inform the company when new material was needed. I never thought one day I would own one.
Well, there's a ton of things to know about these units. First: Sealed Air sells the new systems and only services the ones they sell. To become a customer, you must buy a system from them. This makes it hard to get parts and access to technical info for the packing system. It is a well built system and the one I've used never required a service tech, that I know of (Some of the tech support is over the phone). I'm an aircraft tech by trade and have most of the knowledge needed to keep this machine going but nothing beats the AK Audio site for access to audio information (Right!). Maybe there is one for these units?
I ended up buying a second unit for parts. That one was actually in better shape than the first one, and I was able to make one good unit out of two. Plus, I gained a few new cubes of material to boot!
I was hoping others might share their experiences in maintaining these wonderful packing systems.
There's a lot of info that I could speak of but wondered if anyone wants to share their knowledge of these packing systems?

Some other thoughts:
The material used in this system is expensive but the economy is in the scale of it's need. If you only ship 50 heavy, fragile items out a year, it's barely worth it . I got the equipment and material cheap. I have the space to handle it and hope others in my audio community will need the service.

 

[Blue Shadow]

So we send you the unit to be foamed into the shipping box to use this service you want to provide. Guess we should do that before we do all the work on them to make em right before shipping them back to the owner.

Actually, most excellent that you have your own machine. Its gotta help prevent shipping damage.

 

[zebulon1]

I was referring to the local gentleman
Although, I'll make an exception for you.
Their already bugging me to use it.

 

[blhagstrom]

You know.

From your location, offering a foam in place packing service to the public may be a little side hussle to bring in some spare coin.

We used to flip collectibles and antiques at the Sampler Shop and there were “tourists” interested in larger items than they could take on flights. Although I was hustling stuff on eBay, I never was rigged enough to offer pack-and-ship service. I sold “smalls” on eBay and had the bigger stuff in the shop.

Vegas is service oriented and offering a service is the name of the game.

If you could network at the airport to advertise to the arrivals. Buy stuff, go nuts, I’ll get it home for you. $$$$?

 

[Watthour]

I suppose you've already got your hands on the manuals and parts guides. There seems to be a lot of support on the www for the unit. I've always wondered about the foam guns since I used to work in a pace where the system generated "hot" bags of foam in continuous lengths to be placed into a carton and "grow" into whatever voids were present. It was used to pack everything from instruments to injector pumps, very successfully.

For the volume I would use I can get along with PS foam sheets, plastic bags, and "foam in a can" to mold around the faceplates and corners, but it's slow.

 

[zebulon1]

Last weekend I tried to fire up the foam packing system up and ran into trouble. I was hoping the "A" side hose was clear and could pass the material. The system had been sitting for way longer than I hoped and the material crystallized in the hose. The other system I have has the same "A" hose problem, so I rigged up a flushing tank and pump to clean out the good spare "B" hose. Not sue it will work. The heater is a separate component, inserted into the hose. It runs the full length, used to heat the material to 150 degrees F. When the hose turns solid the heater is toast. The spare heater I salvaged from the spare "B" hose was removed without any trouble and rinsed of the material with the special solvent Sealed air provides. The same solvent is what I used to flush the "B" out of the good hose. I don't know if this will work. I have to make sure all the "B" is removed before connecting to the "A" pump. It's like matter and antimatter when the materials react.

 

[zebulon1]

Everything is working correctly.
The "A" material has some sediment at the bottom of the container and clogged the intake of the pump assembly. I raised the pump off the bottom after clearing the debris. I read a process to strain the sediment out but it seems like a big mess would ensue. I was using latex gloves for most of the system service but my hands are still recovering from the resin that found its way to my skin.
Below is a bad "A" resin hose from sitting to long. The hoses should be supple, flexible and able to be coiled, if not their toast.
The open center area is where the heater core is located.

 

[Sonance'84]

Very cool, I'll keep this in mind next time I don't have the original packaging materials.

 

[coleman0108]

Hello Zebulon1,

Thank you for sharing your experience with the 901 system. I know the thread is old but I too am going to be picking up a used instapak 901 system. I appreciate the advice on checking the hoses. How has your experience using the system been? Do you find it constantly needs to be in use to continue to function correctly? I plan to ship about 4 items a week. If you let the unit sit unused for 2 weeks when you returned would you have a problem with it? I expect it to be a pain but am willing to fiddle with it and learn as I go.