Tips for Moving and Storing Valuables

Relocating Your Business? Safeguard Your Electronics

30 October 2017

Candice Vasquez

Moving electronics isn't as simple as moving most fragile items. Unlike glass or clay, most electronics have sensitive parts on the inside of their chassis that can still be damaged even if wrapped and boxed. Here are a few issues to understand as you look for a reliable way to move your office essentials to a new building:

Unseen Momentum Damage

Think of the average desktop computer, laptop, copier, or printer. These devices usually have a case on the outside made of metal, sometimes with plastic covers to add designer appeal. When you wrap these types of electronics with bubble wrap or seal them in foam padding, you're only protecting the outer case. The inside parts are vulnerable to a trickier problem.

Why bother with the outside case at all? These devices are designed to be protected against common office or household risks, such as feet accidentally kicking into sensitive electronics on a daily basis. They aren't designed to be transported multiple times, and electronics manufacturers have entire packaging and shipping agreements to make sure that their devices don't arrive at retailers and individual customers in bad shape.

When electronics are knocked around too much in transit, some of the internal components can be knocked loose or cracked. Especially when dealing with expansion cards such as sound cards, network interface cards (NICs), or graphics/video cards, these thin devices can shake and flop like diving boards.

Unfortunately, they're not as fragile as surfing boards. With a hard enough bump on the road, they'll snap even if the case is padded properly.

Work Around The Shaking Damage

The first an easiest thing to do inside electronics is to remove the flexible parts. In desktop computers, this is easy; wear an anti-static wrist strap, open the computer, unscrew any mounting screw for expansion cards, and place the cards (or other protruding boards) into anti-static bags for separate fragile shipping.

Not all devices are as straightforward as desktop computers have begun. For most devices, remove any items that you or other users have loaded. This includes paper, discs/diskettes, cartridges, tapes, rolls, or chips that you specifically push into the device.

Even if these items aren't momentum risks, they could eject accidentally, which could damage the small parts as bigger items crush them in transit. The items may also be hard to find after being ejected, especially when dealing with SD (Secure Digital) cards that can slip through cracks.

A commercial relocation company can give you help with commercial relocation by explaining their electronics moving process, so give a moving professional a call to schedule an appointment.

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