Can a drone dock case travel standing on its end?

A: No. The platform weighs about 40 kg, and on end that load bears on one 8 mm wall. After 300 km the wall bulges 3 mm and takes the plate with it, pushing flatness past 4 mm.

Does adding ribs always make the platform flatter?

A: Only until shrinkage takes over. Eight ribs at 150 mm pitch add 0.5 mm of wave on a 1.2 m base, so six at 200 mm is the balance. Eight belong to the 1.5 m platform.

What happens if the cases are stacked three high?

A: The bottom case carries 255 kg, keeps 0.8 mm of permanent set after 48 hours, and the diagonal grows from 3 mm to 5 mm.

Is there a lower limit on sling angle?

A: Keep it at 45° or flatter. At 30° each sling carries 42.5 kg instead of 24.5 kg, the stress at the lug root doubles, and the sling starts cutting the rim.

Can an out-of-tolerance platform be corrected on site?

A: Up to 0.5 mm, by shimming the four support points. Beyond 1 mm the twist is plastic, and a drone dock case cannot pull it back.

Drone Dock Case

Quick answer: A drone dock case defends one measurement above all: 2 mm per metre of flatness on a 1.2 m landing platform, held from the factory floor to the tower base.

Why a Landing Platform Deforms in Transit
Reading the Flatness Number
Rib Layout and the 15 mm Buffer Layer
Lifting, Stacking and Vibration Limits
A Three-Point Measuring Routine
FAQ

1. Why a Landing Platform Deforms in Transit

A 1.2 m landing platform leaves the plant as a plate 30 mm thick, carried at four corners. On a bench it is stable. Load it into a van, run 300 km of highway and two stretches of gravel, and it can arrive twisted, because every force that reaches the plate comes in through the case.

The plate is the soft half of the system. A PP shell can be thickened until it stops deflecting; the platform cannot, since its thickness and support points belong to whoever designed the dock. That inversion is what separates this product from an ordinary equipment case.

Flatness is a system result, not a case specification.

Four loads matter. Static weight puts 85 kg on the bottom panel, stacking adds another 85 kg, and 1.5 g swept from 5 to 200 Hz works the foam by a fraction of a millimetre every minute.

2. Reading the Flatness Number

A figure such as 2 mm per metre is often copied onto a whole plate as one tolerance, which is not what it means. The allowance applies along any 1 m span, in any direction, read from a straight edge laid on the surface. A 1.2 m plate has more room end to end than a 0.8 m one, and the diagonal needs its own limit because twist shows up there first.

Platform edge	Flatness allowed	Diagonal difference	Ribs in the base
0.6 m	1.2 mm/m	1.5 mm	4
0.8 m	1.5 mm/m	2 mm	4
1.0 m	2 mm/m	2.5 mm	5
1.2 m	2 mm/m	3 mm	6
1.5 m	2.5 mm/m	4 mm	8

A saddle passes a four-edge check: flat at the rim, low in the middle. Two crossed diagonals catch it in under a minute. Above 1.5 mm of twist, correction becomes replacement.

3. Rib Layout and the 15 mm Buffer Layer

Ribs stiffen the base, and the instinct is to add more. Past a point the mould fights back. At 40 mm rib height, 200 mm pitch and 6 mm root thickness, a 1.2 m base holds peak deflection under 1.2 mm; tighten the pitch to 150 mm and cooling shrinkage adds 0.5 mm of ripple that no further ribbing removes.

Drone dock case foam padding being die-cut on a press, a worker in a blue uniform guiding black foam sheets beside a red work table

The buffer is 15 mm of EPE at 30 kg/m³, cut as one piece. A splice is a hinge: across a 5 to 200 Hz sweep the halves move 0.3 mm apart, and that step pushes into the plate edge, exactly where flatness is measured. Cut tolerance is ±1 mm with 2 mm clearance.

Softer is not better. Foam under 25 kg/m³ crushes 4 mm under an 85 kg static load: corners sink, the middle stays high, and the lid bows the plate into an arch.

Attachment	Buffer thickness	Compression when closed	Platform sizes	Watch out for
One-piece cut	15 mm	20%	1.2 m and up	±1 mm cutting tolerance
Strip assembly	15 mm	20%	below 0.8 m	0.3 mm joint offset
Adhesive backing	10 mm	25%	0.6 m	creep above 55 °C
Glue dots	12 mm	22%	0.8 to 1.2 m	dots at 150 mm pitch
Channel insert	15 mm	18%	1.5 m	2 mm slot clearance

Wall thickness is the last lever. Going from 8 mm to 10 mm lifts the empty shell from 85 kg to 96 kg and turns a two-person carry into a crane job.

4. Lifting, Stacking and Vibration Limits

Four lugs, 21 kg of static load each, and that holds only while slings hang vertical. At 60° a single sling carries 24.5 kg, at 45° it carries 30 kg, at 30° it carries 42.5 kg. With a dynamic factor of 2, slings rated at 85 kg are the minimum.

The lugs sit 150 mm in from the long edges. Corner lifting bows the centre of the base; moving pick points inward reverses about 0.4 mm of that sag. Fit 5 mm rubber pads where slings cross the shell; a bare hook cuts a 2 mm notch at the plate edge.

Drone dock case assembly line with workers on red stools at long benches, whiteboard and yellow pegboard along the rail

Stacking is capped at two. Two high puts 170 kg on the bottom case; three high puts 255 kg there, and 48 hours later the base keeps 0.8 mm of set.

Vibration is gentler. A 1.2 m assembly usually resonates between 20 and 25 Hz, where lid and plate move about 0.2 mm apart. Thirty minutes is 36000 cycles, enough for the foam to collapse 0.5 mm in one corner.

Storage scenario	Stack height	Load on bottom case	Time allowed	Re-check
Plant buffer stock	2	170 kg	30 days	1 unit every 15 days
Road transport	1	85 kg	8 hours	on arrival
Sea freight	2	170 kg	45 days	diagonal first
Open yard	1	85 kg	7 days	cover every 3 days

Forklift pockets are cut 120 mm high, and the tines load the base at close to 300 kg. A 3 mm steel liner running 50 mm past the opening spreads it; without one the lip rolls up after about 20 lifts.

5. A Three-Point Measuring Routine

Measure the same plate three times, at dispatch, before loading and on arrival, and write the figures on one card. A drift above 0.5 mm identifies which leg of the journey did the damage.

Read the corners in place, but wait 10 minutes: the lid foam still pushes upward and biases the gauge low by 0.3 mm. Between -20 °C and 55 °C the modulus of PP moves about 20%, so 1.8 mm outdoors in winter is not 1.8 mm indoors.

Conclusion

The payload is a thin plate, so the design work sits in the base rather than the walls: six ribs at 200 mm pitch, 15 mm of one-piece EPE, four lugs 150 mm inboard, a two-high stacking cap. Hold flatness to 2 mm per metre and the diagonal to 3 mm, and the platform arrives ready to bolt down. A drone dock case adds no stiffness of its own; it only stops transport from spending the stiffness the platform already has.