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Instapak "Reverse Molding" Protective Packaging

By Rain Noe - April 20, 2011

in Tech

A company called Sealed Air makes a product called Instapak Foam-in-Place packaging, which provides an interesting and effective way to safely ship packages with irregular shapes. The Instapak comes in flat form and is loaded with two chemicals, separated by a bladder. The user applies pressure to burst the internal seal, then provides agitation, and the resultant chemical reaction forms an expanding foam that "grows" around whatever it is you're trying to ship. Using two of these, you can essentially reverse-mold the item. Check it out:

Afterwards you can reuse the Instapaks to ship other stuff—the packages retain some mushiness for manual re-forming—or you can ship them back to the company for recycling. Sealed Air claims that cradle-to-cradle, Instapaks are green; you can read their lengthy explanation of that in this downloadable PDF.

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Alexvrb

13 years ago

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I agree with Earthman, have to be careful what you pack with this stuff. Anyway, this stuff has actually been in use for a while. They've been using it to package Raybestos professional grade brake pads for some time now. Helps prevent damage to the friction material and brake hardware (when included).

(I know this post is a little old, but I just saw it reposted on another site that didn't allow comments.)
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Earthman

13 years ago

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Good system. However, be careful!
I was working on a aerospace project with very expensive plastic prototypes and the client had shipped the parts to us for modifications using a foam system. Well, the heat that is generated from the foam setting deformed the plastic parts. Let just say it was not a good.
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C Roberts

13 years ago

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Yes! We have to pack and ship fragile real mower and string trimmer prototypes all over the continent. It used to take us hours to cut the super expensive foam we used to fill the containers until we found this stuff. It Rocks!
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