Reinforce your Tenba Tower case
We’ve been working on reinforcing our Tenba Air Tower cases for travel and shipping. As purchased, our Tower cases have proven to be inadequate protection from the Airlines & FedEx. Luckily, we have not had problems with our Monitor cases.
A FedEx Packaging Engineer visited us (because we filed a pricey insurance claim) & showed us exactly why the case consistently fails to protect our Towers (our claim was denied due to “inadequate packaging”).
Damage is likely caused by the case falling off a conveyor belt. Conveyor belts move freight thru shipping centers & are above hip height to prevent back injuries. If the case falls off the belt onto a cement floor, there is a good chance of damage.
The case is most vulnerable from top impacts as there are large air gaps between the case lid & the Tower. You can easily dent the case lid by pushing firmly with your hand. Try it. A heavy impact to the top of the case will crush the lid and contact the Tower, commonly dislodging RAM or video cards, or even bending the computer handle. ”These air gaps must be filled with padding,” said the FedEx Engineer. If it had been up to his standards, our Tower would have been replaced. Because it was not, we are left with damaged machines & voided AppleCare protection plans.
We have implemented his suggestions to reinforce our cases & hope to no longer see this kind of damage from traveling with the Big Guns.
Below are pictures showing what we have done and what you should do too if you travel with a Tower. We don’t promise this will protect you from the Gorillas, but it should do a much better job guarding your precious computer from impact.
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February 8th, 2009 at 23:20
I actually find the equivalent Pelican case to be an even better option.
http://www.casesbypelican.com/apple-g5-1640.htm
It’s not much more expensive (actually less so than the Tenba which has wheels attached, and the Pelican’s got that covered as is). It doesn’t need any modification in order to offer complete protection. It is enormous and real heavy, but clients are aware of inevitable baggage overcharges if they want a tower on a travel job, right?
And, it still fits in the trunk of a standard NYC taxi cab!
February 8th, 2009 at 23:46
Thanks for the link, Adam.. The Pelican case is 40 lbs. EMPTY. That means your Tower case rolls into the airport at 90 lbs or more. Yikes. Be sure to stretch before you pick that thing up.
We wrote this article for those who already own Tenba cases & would like to beef them up. Modifying the Tenba case is easy & it works great if done right. It is also a lot less expensive than purchasing an additional case specifically for air travel.
This is a far cry from an endorsement of Tenba. We are unhappy with the stock product (don’t get me started about the wheel design) but if Tenba incorporated these small design changes it would improve greatly. The additional padding adds less than a pound to the case & according to the FedEx engineer will allow us to make insurance claims if we encounter future damage.
June 14th, 2010 at 06:41
[...] the case will be able to handle a stronger impact than the original case. Looking at the photos provided on their website, it appears some of the extra storage space in the [...]