The manufacturing process of aluminium cans consists of deep drawing cups from circular blanks cut from a EN AW-3104 (AlMg1Mn1) alloy sheet of maximum thickness, 0.3 mm and then of a sequence of drawing operations (redraw, wall-ironing and can-bottom reverse drawing), all completed in one step.

The sheet material must be of minimum anisotropy to avoid major earing during deep drawing which may cause clip-off during subsequent re-draw and wall ironing.

The diagram shows the various stages of the can forming process (initial draw, redraw and wall ironing), click on start to view these.

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Section Summary
This completes the current section. If necessary, please ensure that you have achieved the learning outcomes for this section:

• describe the deep drawing processes