Alloy Wheel Manufacturing: From Spokes to ABB Robots

Most new cars leave the factory on cast aluminium wheels, yet a century ago they rolled on wooden spokes. Alloy wheel manufacturing now happens in large, hot plants where molten aluminium is cast, cooled, X-rayed, machined and painted, and people rarely handle a wheel along the way. This post follows the wheel from spoked and steel designs to the first cast alloy wheels, then looks at how robots tend today's casting, machining and painting cells, using a new Indian wheel plant as the news hook. It also covers where ABB robots fit and what wheel makers still have to work out.

Rows of alloy wheels on the Borbet stand at the Essen Motor Show, 2024. Photo: Matti Blume / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From wooden spokes to the first cast alloy wheels

The first cars borrowed their wheels from horse carriages. A 1909 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu still runs on wooden spokes inside a steel rim, the type known as an artillery wheel, and wheelwrights shaped and fitted those spokes by hand. Sports cars moved to wire spoked wheels, which were lighter and came off quickly with a single central nut. Mass market cars settled on pressed steel wheels, stamped from sheet and welded together, because they were cheap to make in very large numbers.

The wooden spoked artillery wheel of a 1909 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu. Photo: DeFacto / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Racing pushed wheels toward light metal. The Bugatti Type 35, which first raced at the 1924 French Grand Prix in Lyon, is known as the first car to use cast alloy wheels. The earliest light alloy wheels were magnesium, and gravity cast magnesium wheels have been made since the early 1920s. In gravity casting the metal is poured into a mould and fills it under its own weight. The tooling is cheap, which suited small batches of racing wheels, although magnesium itself was expensive and corroded easily.

A Bugatti Type 35C on its eight spoke cast alloy wheels at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, 2025. Photo: Neil / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Aluminium took over in the 1960s. Until the middle of that decade most cast aluminium wheels were brittle, stretching only 2 to 3 percent before they cracked, and better casting methods fixed that. Low pressure die casting became the main process: air or gas pushes molten metal up a tube into a steel mould from below. Ronal, a Swiss wheel maker, launched its R1 wheel in 1969 in 15 sizes. The moulds were skilled hand work as well, and even today a wheel mould can need up to 20 hours of manual rework before it is ready for casting.

A cast alloy wheel on the Mercedes-Benz C111-II experimental car from 1970. Photo: Kinka / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How robots tend today's alloy wheel lines

Demand is still growing, especially for motorcycles and scooters. On September 14, 2026, the board of Indian supplier Uno Minda approved a two wheeler alloy wheel plant at Kharkhoda, Haryana, with about Rs 155 crore of capex. Autocar Professional reports it will add 1.3 million wheels a year, absorb 2 million units of capacity moved from Supa in Maharashtra, and lift the company's total two wheeler wheel capacity to 9.3 million. The same meeting approved a new casting plant in Hosur that will make high pressure die cast two wheeler wheels among other parts. Kharkhoda is due to start production in the fourth quarter of FY2028.

Aerial view of the Borbet alloy wheel plant at Hesborn, Germany. Photo: Borbet GmbH / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In a modern wheel plant, the casting cell is where robots do the most for the people around them. Every hot wheel has to be lifted out of the mould, cooled and carried to X-ray inspection, over and over, in heat and dust. ABB builds Foundry Plus versions of its robots for this kind of work, sealed against water and dirt so they survive steam washing. Robots make the tooling, too. At Ronal's tooling site in Switzerland, a robot system from machine builder Hermle loads six machining centres that cut wheel moulds overnight and at weekends.

An ABB robot seen between the open halves of a die casting die. ABB builds Foundry versions of its robots for wet, dirty cells. Photo: ABB

After casting, each wheel is turned on CNC lathes, drilled for its bolts and leak tested, then painted and often diamond cut to give it a bright face. Robots load the machines and carry wheels between stations. ABB's IRB 6700 is the size of arm that can lift wheels and tend heavy cells; at the German steel service centre Ancofer, one grinds and deburrs parts in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell. For coating, ABB's IRB 5500 paint robot is designed to work in the explosive air of a paint booth. Lines like this are usually laid out and tested first in RobotStudio.

A forged wheel being CNC machined under a spray of coolant, 2020. Photo: Cameronm125 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What comes next for alloy wheel manufacturing

Wheels keep getting bigger. Hermle's report on Ronal says 24 inch wheels are now feasible, with moulds 600 mm across that weigh up to 240 kg. Lifting those all shift is a job I would happily give to a large robot. Electric cars bring their own demands, since they are heavy and need strong wheels, and designers want shapes that cut drag. Our post on die casting and gigacasting shows how far foundry automation has already gone, and wheel plants are likely to add more cells where one robot unloads the casting machine and another checks the part.

An ABB IRB 6700 grinding a steel part in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer. Photo: ABB

Car owners never see most of this, but they notice it in price and in repairs. Wheel refurbishment shops already use CNC lathes to recut diamond cut faces after kerb damage, and the camera guided machining used in factories could make those repairs faster and more consistent. Recycled aluminium is also getting attention, because wheel makers want metal with a lower carbon footprint. Fitting tires is a separate job, which we looked at in our post on tire manufacturing, and it happens after the finished wheel has left the wheel plant.

An ABB IRB 5500 paint robot, built to work in explosive paint booth air. Photo: ABB

Money comes first among the open problems. A foundry cell with sealed arms, grippers for hot wheels and vision is expensive, and a smaller wheel maker has to keep it busy to pay it back. Hot metal and heavy moulds call for strict guarding, and ABB's SafeMove can limit where an arm goes and how fast it moves when people come close. People are the slowest thing to change. Casting a sound wheel still depends on staff who understand metal, moulds and defects, and plants now also need technicians who can program and maintain the robots.

A machined wheel face straight out of the CNC machine, before finishing. Photo: Cameronm125 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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