HOW ARE TINS MADE?

2022-09-23

HOW ARE TINS MADE?Tin boxes are made from tinplate that is steel electro plated with a layer of tin, this makes the tin a printable surface with a bright finish.

Tin boxes are made from tinplate that is steel electro plated with a layer of tin, this makes the tin a printable surface with a bright finish.

Tinplate is supplied either on a coil and cut into sheets or is supplied in sheets.

The tin is then printed using conventional ink printing, the printing is flexo where we have a roller that picks up the ink and applies this to the tinplate, after each pass of the printing pass which can have either 2 or 4 stations the tinplate is then heated in an oven to “bake” the inks on to the tin plate.

The maximum number of colours that can be printed is 4 colour process and 4 pantone colours.

The minimum number of sheets that can be printed at any one time is 3,000 sheets.

Once the design or designs have been printed a final lacquer is applied to the tinplate and this is what can come into contact with food stuffs/products. This is tested against food migration testing etc…

The flat printed tinplate is then guillotined from the sheet and stacked ready for production.

The flat printed plate is then formed into the tin shapes using a variety of different machine tools including stamping and seaming machinery.

After the tins have been made they are cleaned and packed into cartons to be shipped around the world.