Northern England | Packaging Production 2012-2020
Extruding tubes for our packaging boxes such as ours with such a thin (1mm) wall thickness is quite a tricky process as the material can prove to be quite unstable whilst heated.
Our factory in the North of England are specialists in small and tightly toleranced extrusions and manufactured the metal tubes for the earlier versions of our pen packaging. In essence the process of extrusion involves taking a large cylindrical billet of material (in our case Aluminium), heating it and then pressing it through a die in the shape of the final cross-section that is desired.
Extruding tubes such as ours with such a thin (1mm) wall thickness is quite a tricky process as the material can prove to be quite unstable whilst heated. We also want the best surface finish possible which means drawing the tubes from the die at a slower speed to avoid streaks. All this being said our job is still pretty straightforward compared to the intricacies of the aerospace, electronics and medical parts they have produced in the past. With over 30 years experience they are one of the UK's leading specialists and work to the highest international aerospace standards and provide full traceability on the materials that they use.
After receiveing the extrusions we proceed with the next stages of finishing which involves anodising and then followed by laser marking and engraving. A big thank you to the factory team for taking the time to talk us through what they do.
We redesigned all our product packaging in 2020 and as a result we don't currently use this metal extrusion process. This knowleged is not lost as we explore new ideas and products and we hope it offers some inspiration and insight for your personal and proffesional work.
Metal Extrusion is an energy intensive process but it also offers huge structural and efficiencey advantages over many other metal forming techniques
