Aerosol Can Filling: ABB Robots on the Spray Line

Aerosol can filling looks like a solved problem. A can goes in empty, a valve is crimped on, propellant and product are added, and a sealed can comes out. Lines run at high speed, and the filling itself has been automatic for a long time. The manual work sits around it, where cans are loaded, boxed and stacked. This post traces the spray can from Erik Rotheim's 1927 patent through wartime insecticide cans to modern filling lines, and asks where ABB robots such as the IRB 660 and IRB 360 FlexPicker could take over the handling.

A WD-40 contact cleaner aerosol can with its spray straw attached. Photo: Ubcule / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

From Rotheim's patent to the wartime bug bomb

Erik Rotheim, a Norwegian chemical engineer, applied for a patent in 1926, and sources date his Oslo patent to 1927. He later sold the rights to a US company, and a US patent followed in 1931. The idea was a container that held liquid under pressure and sprayed it through a valve. It did not become a product at the time, and sources disagree on some of the dates. In 1939 Julian Kahn patented a disposable spray can meant for whipped cream at home, but that idea also stayed largely undeveloped.

A hand holding a freon-propelled insecticide aerosol can in a 1943 USDA photo. Photo: USDA via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

War changed that. In 1941 Lyle Goodhue and William Sullivan of the US Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine filed for a refillable "bug bomb" holding insecticide under a liquefied gas, and the patent was granted in 1943. The Federation of European Aerosol Associations says about 50 million were made during World War II, and they were used in the Pacific against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. In 1970 the two men received the first Erik Rotheim Gold Medal, which links the wartime can back to the Norwegian patent. The photo shows a similar insecticide can marked as freon-propelled.

A man spraying insecticide in a hut during the Second World War, a practice called flitting. Photo: National Museum of Health and Medicine / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

After the war the can moved from the barracks to the home. In 1948 the US government licensed three companies to make aerosol sprays. In 1949, by most accounts, Robert Abplanalp, who ran a machine shop in the Bronx, developed a crimp-on valve for low-pressure sprays, a design that suited cheap, low-pressure cans. A valve that is crimped on in one step is also what lets a filling machine run as a line. The cap in this photo is the kind of actuator that sits on top of a valve in spray paint.

A worn spray paint cap, the actuator that sits on a can valve. Photo: Mattia Luigi Nappi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Fill lines, palletizers and a recycling change

Propellant became an issue in 1974, when Frank Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina proposed that CFCs depleted the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 and took effect in 1989, and the US formally phased out CFCs in 1995. Modern cans use other propellants, such as dimethyl ether, which market reports now track as a propellant in its own right. This fixative can carries a printed warning, "sans CFC", as a reminder of that shift. Liquid propellant filling machines need extra safety precautions, which shapes how a plant lays out its line.

A fixative spray can with its lid off; the lid is printed with a warning about CFCs. Photo: W.carter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

A typical filling line has a can feeder, a liquid filler, a valve inserter, a crimper with gas filling, a weight checker, a water bath to test for leaks, an actuator press, a printer and a packing station. One equipment vendor rates its line at 6,000 cans an hour, though that is vendor data. Sidel describes a cosmetics aerosol site with a 350 cans a minute aluminum deodorant line that uses a robotic depalletizer with vacuum grippers on the empties. At the end, ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots could place filled cans into trays and cartons.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items at high speed. Photo: ABB

Further down the line, ABB's IRB 660 and IRB 460 palletizers stack cartons onto pallets. Cartons of finished cans arrive in a steady stream, and a robot keeps the same pace over a long shift. I found no source for an ABB robot on an aerosol line, so this is a possibility, not a customer story. ABB would need to confirm the fit with a specific plant. Our paint can filling post shows the same palletizing logic for a heavier product, and the beverage can post covers the can itself.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizing robot stacking boxed products at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

Layer palletizing suits cans. A layer gripper lifts a whole row of cartons at once, so a four-axis robot like the one pictured here can keep up with a fast line. PickMaster software handles the pick and place of FlexPickers, and the cell can be modeled in RobotStudio before it is built. Programs can be tested for cycle time, reach and collisions, and changed when the product changes. Plants that run several can sizes and fills need quick changeovers as much as speed.

An ABB four-axis palletizing robot with a layer gripper in a packaging line cell. Photo: ABB

Open problems around recycling, safety and cost

Recycling is changing the can's afterlife. From 1 October 2026 Calgary's blue carts accept food and body aerosols, such as cooking spray, hairspray and shaving foam, as part of Alberta's extended producer responsibility framework. Cans must be empty and not punctured or crushed. That puts pressure on makers to supply cans that sort and recycle well. On the factory side, ABB launched the IRB 1700 on 13 October 2026, with a footprint it says is 50 percent smaller than before, which could suit crowded packing areas.

An edge sealer in a 14 oz aerosol can. Photo: Hardcast / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The hard part is safety. Filling areas can contain flammable propellants, so equipment has to be rated for the zone it stands in, and ABB's paint robots are an example of a design built for explosive paint-booth air. Palletizers usually stand after sealing, but a plant still has to classify the area. Cost is the other limit. A small aerosol filler may stack boxes by hand, and a robot cell has to be justified against that labor. Someone on site also has to learn to program and maintain the cell.

ABB paint robots working on a car body inside a paint booth. Photo: ABB

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