So, say you have a $20 million dollar science experiment, and you need to ship it to somewhere like Antarctica. How do you do it???
The KECK2/BICEP radio telescope project here, at Harvard, needed to do just that, and hired the American Repertory Theater crew to do the packing.
You can tell immediately that ART have been doing this, have passed down their best practices, and have been paying attention to how to do it right, for many years. You can also immediately tell that their team features clear communication and well-thought-out designs, by how easy it is to assemble their crates, and by the confirmatory labels that make mating parts match to each other.
The job they did was SO amazing, that I had to document their techniques.
The KECK2/BICEP radio telescope project here, at Harvard, needed to do just that, and hired the American Repertory Theater crew to do the packing.
You can tell immediately that ART have been doing this, have passed down their best practices, and have been paying attention to how to do it right, for many years. You can also immediately tell that their team features clear communication and well-thought-out designs, by how easy it is to assemble their crates, and by the confirmatory labels that make mating parts match to each other.
The job they did was SO amazing, that I had to document their techniques.
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Signing UpStep 1: Packing Theory
Anyone who has ever packed anything, from a homemade ceramic mug that you only need to get across the state, all the way up to this telescope that needs to cross many continents, knows that shipping can be a dodgy proposition.
The secrets are to have 1) a structurally sound box -- one that isn't going to crush or crumple, and that is well-supported and braced on the inside and 2) make sure the item you are packing is surrounded -- tightly packed -- with material, or generally otherwise constrained -- so that if the box is impacted, the object experiences little of the force. Packed, literally.
The ART crew did all of this with very high quality materials (e.g. no two-by-fours -- all milled lumber), the right types of materials (angle brackets when necessary, stiff foam when necessary), a clear minimum of excess packing material, very exact measurement and fitting tolerances, and a generally all-around incredibly high level of expertise.
The secrets are to have 1) a structurally sound box -- one that isn't going to crush or crumple, and that is well-supported and braced on the inside and 2) make sure the item you are packing is surrounded -- tightly packed -- with material, or generally otherwise constrained -- so that if the box is impacted, the object experiences little of the force. Packed, literally.
The ART crew did all of this with very high quality materials (e.g. no two-by-fours -- all milled lumber), the right types of materials (angle brackets when necessary, stiff foam when necessary), a clear minimum of excess packing material, very exact measurement and fitting tolerances, and a generally all-around incredibly high level of expertise.
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2. Why not let the engineering students have a crack at designing a shipping container so that the contents would survive a drop off a ten-story building...wait, that's the other school.
3. How much does FEDEX charge to ship that?
Nice job.
Time from the show coming in with the semi's full of stuff to the end of set-up including lights and sound checks, aprox 4 hours.
Tearing it down and packing it up again - aprox 2 or 3 hours.
Show itself - 90 minutes.
An overview of BICEP (conference proceeding)
BICEP's performance envelope for CMB polarimetry (published in Ap.J.)
BICEP measurement of the CMB polarized power spectrum (published in Ap.J.)
...And it's pretty cool that the second hit from Google is this very Instructable!