I ship machined aluminum molds all over the world now. Primarily by USPS Priority Mail. Since they are aluminum I am concerned about dings and dents in transit. It happens. I usually wrap the molds in bubble wrap and then pack in other packing materials to stabilize them in the container. Now being somewhat of a harder I've always saved bubble wrap for the occasional shipping I had to do as a communications contractor. Now I'm starting to run out.
I'm not against buying bubble wrap, but the price at the local office supply stores is insane. The flip side is its pretty reasonable on-line, but the shipping cost gets the net cost back up there again. Other than hording air in little plastic pockets like I have done, what do you guys that ship stuff do to keep the costs down?
Every piece of bubble wrap that comes in is placed in storage boxes in my office, but its just not enough.