...Then they got an Instapak system. Line the box, squirt in the foam, put the cover sheet on, put the generator into the box, repeat the process for the top pad. Total disaster - nearly every generator that came in had bent rack ears and was bouncing around in the box. The thing was, the Instapak was fine for the top and bottom, where the mass of the generator was spread out over the large surface area, but failed miserably at the sides and corners. Two things worked against it - the first being that the foam at its best wasn't up for the concentrated force applied when the mass of the generator was applied though the much smaller surface area of the sides, front and rear vs the top and bottom, and the second being that because the two halves of the foam pillows met roughly mid way up the side of the generator, there was incomplete fill at that area, further reducing the ability of the material to hold up to forces resulting from shipping. We went from near 100% safe transport to damned near 100% needing body work upon arrival; the biggest thing being bent rack ears. The rack ears were, of course, an extension of the front panel material rather than add-on pieces of extrusion, so if the panel was damaged beyond the point where I could straighten the ears without it looking too much like a dog's dinner, I'd need to swap in a replacement piece of sheet metal. ROYAL PITA. Despite my pleas, they continued to use that system. Once I'd fixed the damaged generators, I'd squash down the foam at the sides and put an L shaped piece of Ethafoam in each corner (sort of like the OLD way) and they'd be fine. If they'd have put Ethafoam Ls in with the Instapak at the factory, things would have been fine, but that never happened. Horses for courses.
That said, I'll add my endorsement of AllTest knowing their way around packaging - in my experience, too, they have always done an excellent job of it.
-Pat
I'll have to say here I believe that yours was a problem which would be best resolved via changes in SOP rather than a fault in the InstaPack process;
yes, I acknowledge you hinted at that already. 
You say there were voids; that is the key fail. You have to devise a procedure wherein there are no voids; if this means a larger box and individual baggies of
doom foam for the corners and sides, then that's what you have to do.
I've shipped very large, very heavy engine parts... heads, intake manifolds, even a SBC engine block, successfully using the old-school baggie and foam-nozzle system; I even replicated the process using shopping bags and
Great Stuff canned insulation for a Holley carb I sold on the Bay of Evil.
The 2 key parts are making sure you use enough foam-baggies that there are no voids, and that you have a big enough
double-walled carton so the foam doesn't bust the carton open as it expands. Ideally, you want it so the foam actually squeezes the product from that expansion.
As for the debate over the fundamental non-recyclability of the stuff... I agree it's a sore point. But you have to weigh the value of the precious cargo and getting it intact, and the effect your salvation thereof has overall against that bad Karma. To a certain extent, I see it as a necessary evil.
It's all about the balance; and you have to draw the
"First, do no harm..." line somewhere, otherwise you'd consider your part in supporting megacorporations like fleaBay, PayPal and its kin, your credit card company, the freight carrier and the fuel burned in transport... and so on, until you get to a point where all the weight of living in the modern world causes rigor mortis and you can't
do anything.
Of curse, you
could choose to spend some of your hard-earned money supporting anti-excessive-packaging PACs... maybe even introduce an agenda to make these materials out of biodegradable polymers, such that their toll on the environment is somewhat mitigated.
EDIT: As for the "it's not cheap" argument... DOING IT RIGHT NEVER IS. 
All the time we spend griping about shite packing in here, and every one of those incidents could have been avoided by paying for the materials to do it right. The constant pressure we all put on vendors to eat shipping costs on large, heavy items is a large part of that cycle of failure. 
IME, this thermonuclear protection adds about $8-15 to the cost of the shipping; which cost is largely offset by their bulk-rate shipping via USPS Priority Mail. The 54645A and 2465B I was looking at each have total shipping of US$29 to me here; it jumps to $70 to ship it to Houston. Obviously, the shipping itself is the major part of that.mnem
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