GALLERY

Hoogovens Packaging Steel (after the merge with British Steel now part of Corus) are actively promoting the use of steel for packaging purposes. One of the new developments is the shaped can: a can that has no longer just a cylinder shape, but a freeform shape instead. Hoogovens mentions the following advantages: "With infinite choice of products and an overload of commercials in the media, consumers are increasingly letting their decisions whether or not to buy a certain product depend on its packaging. They look for quality, convenience of use and transportation, a good environmental perception and, last but not least, attractiveness.

This is why shaped cans are the future in the packaging for food, beverages and products for personal care: they combine the traditional convenience and environmental attractiveness of cans with quality image and attractive styling, of both overall shape and surface aspects such as embossing, texturing and decoration."
Hoogovens started shaping cans in 1996 when the Hoogovens beer glass can was chosen can of the year.

left: the Hoogovens beer glass CAN right: the freeform shapes

Obviously for the manufacturing of these shaped cans a mould is needed, and for the prototypes tools are used machined in a special quality Cibatool (Renshape), on a desktop milling machine using DeskProto. Using these tools it is very easy to convert the Pro Engineer design into a set of two tool-halves, and within a few days the first series of prototype cans are ready. See the illustrations below showing the milling of a tool-half.

milling of one tool-half