Hello there, This is a short and sweet guide that will help you ship that beautiful glass laser tube, head or system so it arrives in one peice. Imagine how heartbreaking it would be to get a nice new $thousand ion laser on ebay for your lightshow rig that was shown working  in the add only to receive is so badly broken the tube literally pours out of the head.  It's happened to me... more than once... and im sick of it! :-( On ebay you can find several types of lasers from small laser diodes to beautiful blue beam argon lasers all priced pennies on the dollar.  If you want to know a little about the fine art of packing heavy delicate items like lasers read on!

Small items like laser diodes/ pointers/ modules can be packed in padded envelopes if wrapped in antistatic bags and a bit of newspaper first. I will therefore concentrate on the big heavy fragile as heck argon hene and co2 laser heads.  First thing to know is that ALL GLASS LASER HEADS are NOT CREATED EQUAL! Small Helium neon type lab lasers, heads, or tubes can for instance be packed wrapped in 2 inches of small bubble wrap and put in a box with 2 more inches of padding of your choice. The most important thing with these is that it CANNOT move when the box is shaken.  For packing sensitive integrated high power laser diodes, you can use anti-static bubble wrap, the cheapest source is the foil-bubble-wrap sold for HOUSING INSULATION about $15 for a 30 foot by 3 foot roll of the stuff! Anything packed in this stuff should be immune to all but nuke-blast EMP

On the other extreme there are the bigger HeNe lasers, MOST CO2 lasers, liconix He-Cd lasers, Omnichrome 543 and Spectra physics water cooled argon lasers. This type of laser head is VERY fragile and the tube inside cannot survive even a modest amount of shock. Less than a foot drop to concrete floor and it's done... If sending USPS, your box will be dropped from a minimum of 3 feet at least twice during shipment, If UPS than it'll get even worse treatment... any questions? You want it packed so it cannot move but ALSO so that the shock of drops and kicks is not transferred to the head. These are best packed form-fitted in the squishy type of  foam found lining furniture or that cool FOAM-IN-PLACE stuff.  A cheap source of this is OLD furniture, go to the dump armed with a box cutter, there will be more than enough waiting for you and the dump owners will be _MORE_ than happy to have you take it! Carpet padding also works GREAT as well, and again the dump is the best place to get it. Belive me the dump is your friend! Boxes (especially BIG ones), foam, packing penuts ,bubblewrap & more all for FREE!!! Save the Earth (and your wallet) by reusing TRASH as packing material! Then THAT BOX  should be packed  in another box as described below.  Foam in place or squishy foam IS NOT ENOUGH- YOU NEED 2 BOXES to reasonably guarantee the item will arrive in one piece.

How to pack small air cooled argon lasers such as SP 262's NEC 3030's, Alc 60's, Uniphase/Cyonics heads, Omnichrome He-Cd lasers, as well as medium size He-Ne lasers. Here is how i would pack it: First wrap it in a garbage bag and a brown paper bag to "blunt" any sharp edges. Then wrap in about 2 inches thick of small bubble wrapping. Next, i would line a box on all 5 sides with 2 to 3 inch thick polystyrene board, Menards or Home Depot sells this stuff- get the kind that is sort of squishy and makes little balls when crumbled. Next I would lower the laser/ bubblewrap burrito in. Next, I would put a sparing amount of packing peanuts to take up any extra space and cut a final piece of foam board to fit over the top and seal the box. Packing it this way will be tedious, but the end result is that if it gets enough shock to get damaged, it will be blatently obvious that they did something bad to your package, you'll get the insurance claim no questions asked. This method is good for any sort of heavy but delicate thing like Scintillation detectors, medical image intensifier tubes, or x-ray heads.

The power supply it's controller,and the cooling fan if included should ALWAYS be packed in another box. These are not as delicate, the most important thing with these is that the switches/connectors are protected and that the items cannot move a lot if the box is shaken. Press fitting and taping some foam board to the front will protect the toggle switches from getting broken off. I know from experience that packing stuff like this is a royal pain. Let me know if this guide is helpful, and if interested feel free to browse my listings for cool laser gadgets