Advances in Tin Cans; Lasers Help in Welding Smooth Seam

Some manufacturers contend that the seams on tin can are unsightly and make labeling and decoration more difficult. Technological advances in the welding process are reported to make these seams less noticeable and, in

turn, more attractive cans are known to be created.

In recent years, several companies are known to have begun welding cans with laser beams instead of the conventional

thin copper electrode strip. Although many people in the can industry suggest it will probably be several years before laser welding is widely used in consumer products, the technique is said to become a common method of can manufacturing.

Laser welding is said to cut production costs and it uses about 45 percent less energy than the traditional method, called resistance welding.

''Laser welding is a technology that's just getting started in the United States,'' said Fred L. Church, editor of Modern Metals, published from Chicago. ''Its use here is targeted primarily for the aerosol can business because that's where the technology is considered to be best used.''

Most beverage cans, Mr. Church said, are now made with two pieces of metal. In these cans, there is no side seam because the cylinder and the base are formed from just one piece of aluminum. But aluminum is considered to be too weak for some food and pressurized products, so such cans are usually made from three metal

pieces: a top, a base and a rectangular sheet of tin-plated steel, which must be welded to form a cylinder. In resistance welding, the thin area of overlap on the curved sheet is fused by intense heat conducted through a copper electrode.

A 1,325-watt carbon-dioxide laser, by contrast, melts the steel at the edges of the sheet, fusing the edges and forming an almost seamless cylinder. After the welding, the can passes through a set of rollers that smooth the welded area, preparing it for the subsequent labeling or paint spraying.

The process is controlled by a computer that shuts off the laser if the beam strays from the thin welding area. The biggest driving factor behind the development of laser welding is supposed to be the fact that it makes the cans more esthetically attractive. In the conventional method of welding cans with copper electrodes, there is a seam that's an eighth of an inch or so. With laser welding, that seam is down to almost nothing. Laser-welded cans are likely to appeal to can customers because they are better to place labels on.

 

 

Read the article carefully and answer the questions.

1. What technological problems can manufactures face?

The New York Times

2. Are industrialists very optimistic about using laser welding in consumer products?

3. What are the advantages of laser wielding compared with traditional welding methods?

4. How does the resistance welding technique work?

5. What is the main thing that promotes using a laser welding technique?

Translate the last paragraph of the article in written form.

Translate into English using the Infinitive and Infinitive Constructions where possible.

Новая концепция.

Компания Rasselstein GmbH известна как единственный производитель белой жести в Германии. В настоящее время она продвигает новые упаковочные концепции. Сообщают, что CosmoCan ® является инновационной концепцией для нового вида упаковки из жести.

Говорят, что технология CosmoCan ® с успехом находит свое применение: она может быть использована для аэрозольных продуктов, таких как лаки для волос и дезодоранты, а также напитки и продукты питания.

Как полагают, новая концепция производства даст возможность уменьшить толщину банки. Экономия материала, безусловно, будет способствовать сокращению производственных затрат. Лазерная технология также позволяет производить банки и тубы диаметром менее 10 мм, что, со всей вероятностью, откроет совершенно новые возможности для использования жести.

Стал возможным индивидуальный дизайн упаковки, так как при изготовлении банки используют гидравлический процесс формовки. Новая технология позволяет изготовлять банки необычной формы, что, наверняка, привлечет внимание потребителя.

SELF-ASSESSMENT II 1. Translate the article using a dictionary.

Man of Steel’s Industrial Web, Mirroring Nature ROXY PAINE’S stainless-steel Dendroid sculptures seem to be straightforward enough at first, clearly recognizable as treelike forms. But they always manage to veer into ambiguous territory.

“Maelstrom,” for example, displayed on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year, posed as a mass of fallen trees in the aftermath of a storm. Yet its branches were supposed to exhibit decidedly unbranchlike behavior: fusing and connecting in the manner of neuron paths or pulses of energy. Mr. Paine’s Dendroids are never really just about trees.

“Distillation” is considered to be the most complex and immersive structure in his series of 22 Dendroids. It is now barreling through the James Cohan Gallery in New York. Here Mr. Paine pushes the metaphoric content that underpins these sculptures to new extremes. It still uses arboreal forms, but they now mesh with other overtly defined branching systems: a vascular network of arteries and veins with two plump kidneys, mushroom colonies and their germinating mycelia, neuron bundles

and taxonomic diagrams, and raw pipelines connected to steel tanks and industrial valves.

Each one of his Dendroids is known to be made from standard industrial piping

- the kind typically used by the pharmaceutical industry and nuclear power plants - that Mr. Paine bends, welds, grinds and polishes to turn them into seamless organic forms. They mirror nature but are sure to retain their gleaming industrial artifice. That dichotomy reflects the artist’s ambivalent feelings about tampering with nature.

Like his work Mr. Paine, 44, is also said to straddle worlds. He and his family split their time between an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and their home in rural Treadwell. In the country, he has converted a barn into a full-production metalworking shop that’s staffed by about a half-dozen assistants.

Disassembled Dendroids awaiting future installation are splayed out in the surrounding fields, their antlerlike steel components blinding in a strong sun, and beautifully moody in cloudy light. His “100 Foot Line,” scheduled to be installed this month at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, is a single tree trunk that tapers to a simple point; it is the antithesis of “Distillation.”

The Economist