Imagine you are responsible for the shipment of the latest model of iPhone to a series of cell phone stores across the state. It’s hurricane season, which means that even if your state is nowhere near an actual hurricane, there’s a good chance you’ll encounter some heavy rains at least. Moisture is in the air. More specifically, moisture is in your truck, which is where your massive shipment of brand new iPhones is sitting.
Later that day, you arrive at your destination and drop off the iPhones with no problem. The next day, a customer purchases one of those iPhones. The customer goes home, turns the phone on and it works. One day passes, and all of a sudden, the phone becomes completely nonfunctional. The customer then calls the store and demands a full refund. This then happens again. And again. Until eventually it becomes clear that almost every single iPhone on that shipment arrived with water damage.
Why Does Water Damage Happen?
There are many factors that contribute to why electronics and H2O cannot co-exist. Among the more hidden contributing factors is that of corrosion. Corrosion, simply put, is the breakdown, over time, of a certain material. In most cases, that material is a kind of metal. And its breakdown is a chemical reaction, the cause of which is the surrounding environment of the material. In most cases, when a metal corrodes, there was usually water and oxygen in the environment, which then transforms into iron oxide. Iron oxide is the technical term we use to describe what we more commonly know as rust. It was rust that ruined that shipment of iPhones.
The Essentials that You Should Know About Corrosion
The speed in which the damage that corrosion inflicts on a given electronic device can vary. It depends largely on severity, as in how much water particles managed to infiltrate the device. Equally as important is the amount of time in which the device was wet before someone recovered it. One of the more measurable factors is the humidity level of the environment at the time of contamination. And finally, there’s also variance in the actual makeup of the device. Some electronics are simply more susceptible than others to water damage.
What Can I Do to Prevent This?
If the above scenario seems at all plausible to your company, then we recommend you make the necessary adjustments as soon as possible. If you package your company’s electronics with military specification moisture barrier bags, you can avert this nightmare entirely. Furthermore, for safe measures, we also recommend including humidity indicator cards in the packaging. This will allow you to definitively prove upon arrival, prior to selling any device, that it did not receive water damage in transit. This will effectively minimize those angry phone calls from customers.
Edco Supply Corporation is a business-to-business mil spec packaging company. We specialize in moisture barrier bags, antistatic and static shielding bags, desiccant packs, and more. Our products allow businesses to transport electronics safely, without any risk of them receiving trauma, water damage, or damage from electrostatic discharge (ESD). For more info on our products, please give us a call at 718-788-8108.
