Performance of a Carton - Box Compression vs Bursting Strength (by PackTest.com) скачать в хорошем качестве

Performance of a Carton - Box Compression vs Bursting Strength (by PackTest.com)

Corrugated cartons are primarily used as a secondary packaging medium and are also know as “Shippers” As in all types of packaging, its main purpose is to protect its contents. In simple words, the role of a corrugated carton is to ensure that the product reaches the end-user (Consumer) or POS (Point-Of-Sale / Retailer) in the condition intended by the producer / manufacturer of the product. In order to ensure this, the carton goes through a lot of planned and unplanned stages / conditions. The first and longest stage in a life cycle of the package (after being packed) is storage. This is where it spends almost 90% of its life. The carton are stacked and stored in warehouses (godowns). This is also where 95% of the problems or performance issues occur. Every one of us has surely seen a warehouse with stacked cartons. At the top, the stack seems fine, but as you look down towards the base of the stack, you will see a badly bruised, damaged carton about to collapse. Glance around and you will probably find the same situation in all the stacks across the warehouse. Is it a coincidence? Of course not. The carton is simply not strong enough to withstand the load of the stack. Ask any layman, why does the lowest carton look in a bad shape? He will promptly respond “stack weight is more that the carton’s strength”. Now ask a packaging or quality control man, what is the solution? A vast majority (Yes, its true) will reply – “Increase the Bursting Strength (BS) Specification” Why Bursting Strength? If bursting was a problem, why only the lowest carton is affected. The point being, if Bursting Strength was the culprit, even the top carton should have burst open. In fact, the lowest carton has not burst at all. It has just gotten compressed / collapsed. Even if the lowest carton has burst, it must have burst open because the carton first collapsed and then pushed the product against the walls of the carton. Very rarely will you find the products themselves pushing the carton walls from inside and making the carton “Burst”. So, if everyone understands that the carton failed because of stack load, then it is a problem in compression strength of the carton and not its bursting strength. If that is the case, why are we running behind the wrong parameter called “Bursting Strength”? A large section of the people in this industry (infact every industry) do not possess the correct and complete understanding of the subject. They either are or try to act Ignorant. They will follow what is being done for the last 50 years and will resist any change in their systems. Then there is a class of people who are running the industry with incorrect and partial information. I dare say that these people with partial knowledge are more dangerous than the totally ignorant ones. Another segment of people exists, who understand the issue very well but will not want to go against age old practices of this industry. I wouldn’t say these people are totally wrong. After all who would want to swim against the current and bring in new (and correct) ideas, who will do all the explanation work and the bottom line is – “Why fight the system?”. Everybody Loves Bursting Strength Testing equipment suppliers (some) love Bursting Strength because it sells like hot cakes. Corrugation factories love Bursting Strength because the equipment is small and cheap and more so, because BS is easier to “manipulate”. The buyers (even MNCs) are either ignorant or are not willing to bring about a change. No one is willing to put the foot down and say “Hey, you have fooled me enough, give me real quality. Give me performance based quality. Give me stack load capacity or compression strength.) A majority of MNC’s worldwide have dumped Bursting Strength (way back in late 1980s) and adopted Edge Crush Test (Related to BCT) and Box Compression Test, as a better representative of Box Performance Quality. More than 4 decades later, we are still following the wrong parameters. What is performance quality? Quality Parameters / Specs are of 2 Types : Material Specification / Quality Performance Specification / Quality Material Specifications are those parameters which define the quality of the material used. Performance Specifications are those parameters which define / govern the quality of actual performance of the package / packaging material. Many Material Specifications may also directly affect the performance of the package. Box Compression is a Performance Quality test. Bursting Strength is a Material Quality test. #GiveUpBS #Bursting Strength is a Myth #Bursting Strength is a wrong specification for corrugated cartons.