[guf]

My new to me SS8's arrived in just a week from Alaska. I was so excited to get an early morning delivery from fed ex ground. Unpacked the next to factory perfect pack job by Peter only to find the ceramic Accuton broken. F@#k!! so bummed! A quick call to Jim, then a quick call Madisound , politely begging/whining to the person answering the phone. I'm now expecting a saturday delivery of a new mid range driver. So all i'm able to do is take a few cool photos.



 

[chargedmr2]

Ouch!  That's too bad!  At least they will be good as new in short order.  And at least it's fixable by you, so that should speed things up. 

[Early B.]

What are those speakers next to the SS8's?

[guf]

Ouch!  That's too bad!  At least they will be good as new in short order.  And at least it's fixable by you, so that should speed things up.

If i had to send it in to get fixed I'm be crying right now, yes i'm grateful.

[guf]

What are those speakers next to the SS8's?

Those are my HT2-tls  I'm upgrading from.

[srb]

I knew the Accuton drivers had metal screens over them to protect the brittle ceramic from damage, but I never even stopped to think that it might also be possible to suffer a fracture just from normal shipping forces.  Bad luck, guf, it's probably fairly rare as this is the first report of this kind of damage that I've heard of, and I know Jim has shipped more than a few pairs.
 
Steve
 

[JoshK]

On a side note, those are gorgeous speakers!

[WGH]

And those HT2-TL's will make real nice rear surround speakers. 

[glangford]

I'm not terribly surprised after seeing the box from my just delivered SCSTs. Someone else on this forum had the same problem with the same midrange driver in shipment.  I work in aerospace.  I've seen readouts from accelerometers place into packages that had been shipped with flight hardware in them. You'd be amazed.  A short drop, particularly on a corner can generate extraordinary g levels. (in fact some of those are tests in specifications).  Then you have the frequency component to deal with as well.  With a ceramic like the accuton, all you have to do is hit the right frequency of oscillation at high enough levels to set off a bad event. (SeTac bridge ring a bell?)  It's very likely that the package can experience a damaging load to the rather protected midrange driver and with no apparent packaging or other damage, that is the nature of ceramics.

Fortunately you'll have a new driver today and we look forward to your first listening impressions.

[jsalk]

This is the third instance of this situation we are aware of.  In use, we have never had a problem with the Accuton midrange driver.  But while testing this and another Accuton driver, we were easily able to shatter the cones.  If you touch it with any pressure at all, the cone will shatter.  If the driver hits its XMAX, the cone will shatter.

Fortunately, we solved the shipping problem.  We now place the cartons on a pallet and ship by truck.  Since you have to use a pallet jack or fork lift, it is hard to drop the packages.  So the drivers are not exposed to the kind of g-forces that might be in play with FedEx.  I should note here that since we adopted our present packaging techniques, we have had almost no problems with FedEx shipping with hundreds of pairs of speakers shipped each year.  FedEx seems to do a great job.  But we probably won't use them any time soon for speakers with Accuton drivers.  Better to be safe than sorry.

- Jim

[vortrex]

inexpensive way to monitor what is happening with packages:

http://www.telatemp.com/c/179/Shipping-monitors-teladrop-drop-shock-indicators

[DMurphy]

Interesting.  What G-Force rating would be appropriate for a heavy speaker? 

[groovybassist]

Cool. Have to wonder if they'd still be affixed at the destination. Perhaps inside the box?

[vortrex]

at work we've received packages with electronics worth multi-$100k and they're had shock sensors attached (a different brand I can't recall).  the adhesive is so strong you'd have to cut them off.  they should go on the outside of the box, so you can see if they are triggered before opening the package.

[JerryLove]

Such sensors are common in the freight shipments for much of the IT gear I work with.

[Austin08]

Such sensors are common in the freight shipments for much of the IT gear I work with.

+1. Agree 100%

[guf]

24 hour exercise in patience for me.  Fed ex express dropped the new accuton driver off at before 10am this morning. With in 10 minutes I was up and listening. Grateful Jim answered the phone, day after thanksgiving, and was able to instruct me on the correct driver to buy. Grateful the guy at Madisound personally dropped of my package at his local fed ex office so i could have it next day. I did have to pay extra for overnight saturday shipping (and bought the driver). Amazing my personal "crisis" was taken care of so quickly. Thankful
guf





 

[glangford]

Interesting.  What G-Force rating would be appropriate for a heavy speaker?

It depends. Its all design specific.  A load is applied to the external packaging. It all depends on how that load is transmiitted through the packaging and the structure of the speaker and into the accuton driver,  and if its effectively damped out, or worst case hitting a harmonic and seeing it amplified. (SeaTac Bridge). It also depends if it is a one time high load (drop) or a recurring frequency problem (like experienced in truck travel).  Without actually instrumenting a speaker at various points with acceleromters and applying loads and measuring the system response you'll never know.  Accuton may be able to give you some insight but how it behaves in a large speaker relative to structural response without a ton of analysis and maybe a test is guess work at best.

guf,  Glad to hear you are up and running.

[DMurphy]

I actually wasn't interested in the Accuton per se.  I just wanted to get an idea of which model to order if I wanted to use the sensors in my Philharmonic shipments, which weigh about 70 lbs per package.

[glangford]

I actually wasn't interested in the Accuton per se.  I just wanted to get an idea of which model to order if I wanted to use the sensors in my Philharmonic shipments, which weigh about 70 lbs per package.

Tough to say.  Assuming you meant the model number of the external package sensors linked above.  Maybe contact the company and tell them what you are shipping (overall dimensions and weight) and maybe they can tell you from experience what type of forces are nominal in shipping. From there, pick out a sensor that exceeds nominal by some amount. 

I did find this article:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/tests/which-shipping-company-is-kindest-to-your-packages

It shows that fed ex averages 3.1 acceleration spikes of greater than 6 gs.   So you don't want a sensor that goes trips at 5 Gs, they'll all trip.  (This is probably somewhat size and weight dependent, so best ask the sensor manufacturer what to expect for a given size and weight range of package.)

Another article I read says that tipover can be as big a factor as drop, especially for large packages.

I found this alarming from the article.

"One disheartening result was that our package received more abuse when marked "Fragile" or "This Side Up." The carriers flipped the package more, and it registered above-average acceleration spikes during trips for which we requested careful treatment. "

This might indicate that tagging the package with a sensor could do more harm than good.