MF,
As Sapper said it comes down to cost, can you imagine how long and how much it costs to produce an alloy base compared to a press just going stamp and the base spits out and another sheet slides in to be pressed. I know they go through several presses, the sheet is hole punched, then shape pressed, then trim pressed, but all of this takes only a few second for each pressing. And then at the end of the day the last thing any manufacturer wants is for the product to last a long time, that thinking went out the window once we moved from the 50/60's where we paid big money for products but they were expected to last a long time. From the 70's we started making things cheaper and therefore quality goes down and people don't expect things to last because they are cheaper. Then from the 80's the "free" trade started kicking in and we all know where that has put Australia now
