Custom Corner - Cast Iron Sink
A major kitchen and bath fixture company in the Midwest needed to fix a damage issue they had experienced for more than a year. The product was a 150 Lb cast iron sink with a porcelain coating. The customer stated they needed to pass a 12 inch high drop on the edge of the sink. Achieving this would eliminate 50% of the damage during shipping and handling.
In three weeks we designed a custom protective corner to prevent the porcelain from breaking on edge drops from more than 12 inches. The corner combined two paper products, angle board and honeycomb. The angle board spread the load of the edge of the sink over the honeycomb allowing it to crush during the drops and protect the porcelain from shattering. In the original design we dropped the product from 19 inches without failing. We were able to reduce the materials and hit the 12 inch objective and reduce cost.
The protective corner not only met all of the project requirements, we received a patent on this corner and the customer purchased 2.5 million annually to protect their cast iron sinks.
Objectives met for this project :
• Pass the 12 inch edge drop test
• Do not increase the size of the existing carton
• Cost Effective solution
• Use environmentally responsible materials if possible
• Operationally efficient, easy to use on the packaging line
