I just wanted to do a little ranting about shipping. I bought 3 items from an industrial auction (not the big one that people have been recently talking about) and I used a shipper who I've used many times before. They previously have done a fantastic job of packing & shipping gear (you can see a lot of what they shipped on my channel
TGSoapBox).
Today they really worked over the pooch without any lube...
I bought 3 items, a E4436B Signal Generator (which was just out of cal, looked pristine and was optioned up), a 16902A Logic Analyzer (which worked and looked good) and a 16902B Logic Analyzer (it powered on but didn't display). I went down to the UPS Freight hub today to pick them up and they were in a cardboard box, strapped to a pallet - Fairly typical and generally gives good shipping.
When I got home I opened the box up and was, to say the least, surprised to see that there was absolutely no packing material inside the box:
Whoever packed this just picked a large enough box and dumped them in. You can see where they rubbed against each other:
Because they were just floating around in the box, the connectors punched into other untis - Here's an example:
In fact they moved around so much that when I cut the box open to get the analyzers out, you can see the "dust" sitting there:
That is plastic and metal bits.
Now I get it, the guys packing this stuff aren't going to do the same job that HPAK would do but I'd expect then to use something - Bubble wrap, packing peanuts, solid foam sheets, thick paper, anything - Not just drop this stuff into a box.
So now I have, several units that were pristine/low wear and now they look like their ex-military units out of the field. At least I checked the E4436B and it seems to be working - It turns out that I don't have the IEC C15 (or is it C16) plug for the LAs to test.
Damn it - I'm just annoyed. Anyway, thnaks for the rant - I return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
TonyG