Patent ID: 7398665

Claim:
A method of deforming thin walled bodies to co-ordinate with a pre-applied design on the wall of the bodies, the method comprising: (i) loading the bodies to be gripped securely in respective clamps of a holding table, the holding table being positioned adjacently opposite a tooling table having a plurality of tooling stations arranged to perform different deformation operations on the bodies, the tooling table and the holding table being rotationally indexable with respect to one another to bring the bodies successively to different tooling stations; and (ii) whilst gripped in the respective clamp of the holding table, at a coordinated deformation tooling station engaging tooling to deform the peripheral wall of the body at a predetermined wall zone co-ordinated with the pre-applied design; wherein the predetermined wall zone is co-aligned with the tooling by rotation of the body about an axis prior to securing at the clamp of the holding table, without rotationally driving the clamp to effect co-alignment of the pre-applied design with the tooling for deformation.