A beverage can begins as flat aluminum coil and becomes a thin pressure vessel through drawing, wall ironing, washing, coating, printing, necking, and testing. Follow the body and lid along separate production lines, then see how a double seam and the pressure inside a filled can complete the structure.

Inside this episode:

- Blanking aluminum coil into shallow cups

- Redrawing, ironing, trimming, and forming the bottom dome

- Washing, coating, printing, and curing

- Necking the opening and manufacturing the end

- Double seams, carbonation pressure, testing, and recycling

Sources include United States EPA process documents, Ball manufacturing material, Can Manufacturers Institute resources, and ASME engineering histories.

This episode is a researched narrative summary. Historical records may be incomplete, translated differently, or interpreted differently by scholars. We distinguish documented facts, estimates, disputed interpretations, and later stories where material. Corrections are logged and incorporated into future editions.

Follow Inside the Manufacturing Process for more journeys through the factories behind modern life.

Computer chips are built through repeated cycles that use light to place tiny patterns on silicon. Follow a wafer through photoresist coating, reticle exposure, development, etching, deposition, and alignment, then enter the extreme-ultraviolet systems used for some of the smallest critical features.

Inside this episode:

- Why chipmaking depends on many precisely aligned layers

- Coating a wafer with light-sensitive photoresist

- Projecting a reticle pattern and developing the image

- Etching, deposition, implantation, and repetition

- Extreme ultraviolet light, vacuum, mirrors, and contamination control

Sources include the National Institute of Standards and Technology, ASML and Intel process material, and Semiconductor Industry Association documentation.

This episode is a researched narrative summary. Historical records may be incomplete, translated differently, or interpreted differently by scholars. We distinguish documented facts, estimates, disputed interpretations, and later stories where material. Corrections are logged and incorporated into future editions.

Follow Inside the Manufacturing Process for more journeys through the factories behind modern life.

Most modern windows begin as a continuous ribbon of molten glass floating on liquid tin. Follow sand, soda ash, limestone, and recycled cullet through a hot furnace, the float bath, controlled cooling, optical inspection, and cutting, and learn why this process replaced costly grinding and polishing.

Inside this episode:

- Flat glass before the float process

- Melting and refining the raw batch

- Why molten glass spreads smoothly across tin

- Controlling ribbon thickness and relieving stress

- Inspection, cutting, recycling, and downstream finishing

Sources include Pilkington and NSG process documentation, United States EPA glass-manufacturing records, and United States International Trade Commission reporting.

This episode is a researched narrative summary. Historical records may be incomplete, translated differently, or interpreted differently by scholars. We distinguish documented facts, estimates, disputed interpretations, and later stories where material. Corrections are logged and incorporated into future editions.

Follow Inside the Manufacturing Process for more journeys through the factories behind modern life.