The aspect ratio of a hole is defined as the ratio of the thickness to the diameter of the sheet metal. Most holes in the sheet metal industry are made by piercing. However, for thick sheets, which have an aspect ratio greater than 2, a machining process like drilling instead of piercing is usually used to make holes. In the current study, piercing, which is a shearing process, is evaluated to punch a hole with a high aspect ratio by using a newly designed die set-up. The piercing die was manufactured to prevent the punch from buckling and also to improve the alignment between the die components. An aluminum alloy sheet was selected for the experiments. The influence of several process parameters such as sheet thickness, clearance and stripping force were investigated. Experimentally, a hole with an aspect ratio of 5 was pierced. The resulting hole had a clean surface and the dimensional accuracy of pierced hole was considerably improved with decreasing clearance between punch and die. It is also shown that the larger penetration depth of the effective sheared surface can be achieved for high aspect ratio piercing relative to conventional piercing with a low aspect ratio.