Air is sucked out, pulling the cardboard flat against the table for the cut. Engineer Tom Wood uses Laserpoint Page Design software, which offers many basic box designs. The design is saved to a floppy disk, which Wood then pops into the Kongsberg. He takes a large, flat piece of cardboard from shelves that hold sheets of every thickness. It takes only a minute to complete.
Wood springs forward, pulls the cardboard out and quickly pokes out the excess pieces.
He's left with an ungainly, flapping length of cardboard. He folds and turns it like pizza dough until the flat sheet is transformed into a neat little box with a self-closing lid. Companies are invited to send FedEx prototype cartons for testing. Senior packaging design specialist Pati Person carefully cuts open the outer carton to reveal inner cartons full of such things as live plants. Cardboard a few millimeters thick is all that stands between the timidly waving branches and a House of Horrors of testing equipment.