Re: [ARSCLIST] Transporting 10 inch pancakes

[John Ross <johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At  2/6/2007 01:59 PM, Jerry McBride wrote:
> Does anyone have experience with moving a collection of quarter-inch 
> tapes, as ten-inch pancakes in their original boxes? It seems 
> logical to assume that it would be safer to ship or move tape on 
> reels. How great is the danger that the pancake will come unwound 
> under normal shipping and moving conditions if stored on hubs in the 
> original boxes?

Depends on what you mean by the "original boxes." If you mean the 
standard boxes that contained ten-inch reels with flanges, you should 
add some kind of filler (corrogated cardboard would work) around the 
tape to fill the space inside the box.

But the "original box" for pancakes of tape was usually a large 
carton (~12 x 12 x 12 inches) with molded foam separating the 
pancakes. Because the tapes are flush to the foam top and bottom, 
they're reasonably secure. Even if the tape does unwind, you can 
rewind it by had while still on the foam without much danger of 
having the inside of the
pancake fall out.

Of course, if you can attach flanges before shipping, that might be 
the best approach.

John Ross