Shipping PLA prints in the summer
posted in Community by
printedsolid
However, I thought it might be worthwhile to survey other printers. Have any of you had trouble with parts warping during shipping?
9 years, 9 months ago
These packages were shipped USPS. One first class and the other priority. Both were at their destination within a few days. Something weird must have happened
I'm going to try filing a claim (not holding my breath) on the priority mail shipment since it was insured.
You get some really high temps going in those trailers in the summertime. A lot of the rigs have the lighter fiberglass type roofs that let the sunlight in.This makes it easier to work inside the trailers during the day without those garbage can lights at the opening by the dock. Those roofs also make hotter on the road in direct sunlight during travel times between hubs.
Many times we have opened trailers only to be blasted with the shot of hot air. In fact there were times that you opened a trailer and came back 10 minutes later to start the unload process as it was too hot to work with.
Certain cities may only get a trailer once per day from a major hub so that trailer will fill at different times during the day.and be shipped out later that evening. You can have packages that are loaded on a trailer in the early afternoon sit unattended and closed till later that evening. Talk about a furnace.
And forget about a controlled climate in a hub as that is only for the offices which is about 5% of the total hubs footage.
A package is a package and the model is to fill the trailers as solid as you can like a wall of bricks from floor to ceiling. So no one is concerned with a little heat or even if the box gets a little banged up getting it to fit in the wall.
As 3D printing and shipping become mainstream I think you will hear more about these heat related issues.
I don't see much success on a claim based on heat. It would be different had the trailer caught on fire and the box was singed. Now's there's a case to be made. :)
@elpulpo, This was pretty well wrapped in bubble wrap as well. I have a bunch of the ice cube size bubble wrap, so maybe I'll try it out. Realistically if the whole trailer is getting so hot you can't open it, then everything in there is probably pretty well at equilibrium and the insulation isn't going to do much.
On the plus side, it might prove to be an excellent case to test the new(ish) protoplant high temp PLA in a real application. I'm going to try to snag some data logging thermistors, run a bunch of parts in regular PLA, and a bunch in the HTPLA and ship back and forth with a friend in CA or Phoenix a few times. Will report back on the results.
I have an idea for you. Since we are on opposite ends of the country we should test ship a couple of prints to each other this summer and see have they survive the heat.
I'm thinking late July or early August. If anythings going to fail during shipment that would be the time.
Al
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9530
...and log 3 temperature sensors: Ambient, just inside the box and deep inside the box.
Temperature profile during shipment is a crapshoot unless you paid for a specific class of service (reefers) -- and there are whole academic papers and industries devoted to temperature management during shipping (largely surrounding the transport of foodstuffs).
I spent nearly $300 on dataloggers to track shipment temperatures for cargo coming from China. It's interesting to see the temperature take occasional spikes and plunges for reasons unknown.
Matt, I wish you the best with the USPS. But be prepared to be frustrated even more than you already are. Taj had to deal with an order to Iceland that took a detour through Belarus -- for 2 months -- and her repeated calls to the USPS customer service center and attempt to get an insurance claim made was a total waste of time...
I started shipping International with silver painted bubble-wrap bags - the same style for shipping perishable food overnight with dry ice. It seems to have helped but not entirely solved the issue, especially with some shipping containers sitting for weeks in import/customs queues these days
I am making the switch over to PETG for some of the more sensitive parts - but it is far more difficult to get consistent surface finishes with PETG compared to PLA.
I have looked into annealing PLA as well, which ends up having better heat resistance than PETG and pretty close to ABS, but it requires a lot of testing to ensure the shrinkage of your model during annealing is predictable and repeatable.
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