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The Aluminum Beverage Can - chymist.com

Makers of beer and soft-drinkcontainers in the produce300 million Aluminum bever-age cans a day, 100 billion of them ev-ery year. The industry s output, theequivalent of one can per American perday, outstrips even the production ofnails and paper clips. If asked whetherthe Beverage can requires any morespecial care in its manufacture than dothose other homey objects, most of uswould probably answer negatively. Infact, manufacturers of Aluminum cansexercise the same attention and preci-sion as do makers of the metal in anaircraft wing. The engineers who pressthe design of cans toward perfectionapply the same analytical methodsused for space a result of these e orts, today scan weighs about ounce, downfrom about ounce in the 1960s,when such containers were first con-structed.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN September 1994 49 ANATOMY OF MODERN BEVERAGE CAN reveals the dimen - sions that design and engineering must achieve on a daily basis. The goal of can makers is to reduce the amount of alu -

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Transcription of The Aluminum Beverage Can - chymist.com

1 Makers of beer and soft-drinkcontainers in the produce300 million Aluminum bever-age cans a day, 100 billion of them ev-ery year. The industry s output, theequivalent of one can per American perday, outstrips even the production ofnails and paper clips. If asked whetherthe Beverage can requires any morespecial care in its manufacture than dothose other homey objects, most of uswould probably answer negatively. Infact, manufacturers of Aluminum cansexercise the same attention and preci-sion as do makers of the metal in anaircraft wing. The engineers who pressthe design of cans toward perfectionapply the same analytical methodsused for space a result of these e orts, today scan weighs about ounce, downfrom about ounce in the 1960s,when such containers were first con-structed.

2 The standard American alu-minum can, which holds 12 ounces ofliquid, is not only light in weight andrugged but is also about the sameheight and diameter as the traditionaldrinking tumbler. Such a can, whosewall surfaces are thinner than two pag-es from this magazine, withstands morethan 90 pounds of pressure per squareinch three times the pressure in anautomobile the can industry is not standingpat on its achievement. Strong econom-ic incentives motivate it toward furtherimprovements. Engineers are seekingways to maintain the can s performancewhile continuing to trim the amount ofmaterial needed.

3 Reducing the can smass by 1 percent will save approxi-mately $20 million a year in Aluminum (and make still easier and even lessmeaningful the macho gesture of crush-ing an empty can with a bare hand ).Aside from the savings it yields, themodern manufacturing process impartsa highly reflective surface to the can sexterior, which acts as a superb base fordecorative printing. This attribute addsto the enthusiasm for the Aluminum canamong those who market , that industry consumes abouta fifth of all Aluminum used in the , Beverage cans haveemerged as the single most importantmarket for Aluminum .

4 Until 1985, mostcans held beer, but now two thirds ofthem store nonalcoholic Aluminum Beverage can is adirect descendant of the steelcan. The first of these vessels ap-peared in 1935, marketed by KreugerBrewing Company, then in Richmond,Va. Similar to food cans, this early bev-erage container comprised three piecesof steel : a rolled and seamed cylinderand two end pieces. Some steel canseven had conical tops that were sealedby bottle caps. During World War II, thegovernment shipped great quantitiesof beer in steel cans to servicemen over-seas. After the war, much of the produc-tion reverted to bottles.

5 But veteransretained a fondness for canned beer, somanufacturers did not completely aban-don the technology even though thethree-piece cans were more expensiveto produce than the first Aluminum Beverage canwent on the market in 1958. Developedby Adolph Coors Company in Golden,Colo., and introduced to the public bythe Hawaiian brewery Primo, it wasmade from two pieces of Aluminum . Toproduce such cans, Coors employed aso-called impact-extrusion process. Themethod begins with a circular slug thathas a diameter equal to that of the punch driven into the slug forces ma-terial to flow backward around it, form-ing the can.

6 The process thus made theside walls and the bottom from onepiece. The top was added after early technique proved inade-quate for mass manufacturing. Produc-tion was slow, and tooling problemsplagued the process. Moreover, the re-sulting product could hold only sevenounces and was not e cient structural-ly : the base could not be made thinnerthan inch, which was much thick-er than it needed to be to withstandthe internal , the popularity of theproduct encouraged Coors and othercompanies to look for a better way tomake the cans. A few years later Rey-nolds Metals pioneered the contempor-ary method of production, fabricatingthe first commercial 12-ounce alumi-num can in 1963.

7 Coors, in conjunctionwith Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Cor-poration, soon followed. But pressurefrom large can companies, which alsopurchased steel from Kaiser for three-piece cans, is said to have obliged Kai-ser to withdraw temporarily from alu-minum-can development. Apparently,these steel-can makers feared the com-petition of a new breed of Brewery in St. Paul, Minn., be-gan to sell beer in 12-ounce aluminumcans in 1964. By 1967 Coca-Cola andPepsiCo were using these Aluminum has virtually dis-placed steel in all Beverage production of steel three-piece cans,which are now rarely made, reached itspeak of 30 billion cans in 1973.

8 Thenumber of two-piece steel cans toppedout at 10 billion in the late 1970s. Thisdesign now accounts for less than 1 per-cent of the cans in the market (they48 SCIENTIFICAMERICANS eptember 1994 The Aluminum Beverage CanProduced by the hundreds of millions every day, the modern can robust enough to support the weight of an average adult is a tribute to precision design and engineeringby William F. Hosford and John L. DuncanWILLIAM F. HOSFORD and JOHN have been active in researchon sheet-metal forming for more than30 years and act as consultants to alu-minum producers. Hosford is professorof materials science and engineering atthe University of Michigan.)

9 He receivedhis doctorate in metallurgical engineer-ing from the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology and has written books onmetal forming and the plasticity of ma-terials. Duncan, who received his mechanical engineering from the Uni-versity of Manchester in England, is pro-fessor of mechanical engineering at theUniversity of Auckland in New Hosford, Duncan has written a text-book on the forming of sheet 1994 Scientific American, 1994 49 ANATOMY OF MODERN Beverage CAN reveals the dimen-sions that design and engineering must achieve on a dailybasis. The goal of can makers is to reduce the amount of alu-minum needed without sacrificing structural integrity.

10 A cannow weighs about ounce; the industry hopes to reducethat weight by about 20 OPENINGThe lid is scored so that themetal piece pushes in easilywithout body of the can isnarrowed here to accom-modate the smaller Aluminum alloy typ-ically incorporates by weight1 percent magnesium, 1 per-cent manganese, per-cent iron, percent siliconand percent copper. Itis ironed to dimensions with-in inch and is madethicker at the bottom foradded integrity. It withstandsan internal pressure of 90pounds per square inch andcan support 250 to secure the tab tothe can, this integral piece ofthe lid is made by stretchingthe center of the lid upwardslightly.


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