Aluminium Extrusion Robot: Dick's Press to ABB Arms

Window frames, solar panel rails, heat sinks and car crash beams all start as a hot aluminium billet pushed through a steel die. The press does the shaping. Most of the work around it is handling long, hot profiles that scratch easily, and that is the job an aluminium extrusion robot takes on. This post follows extrusion from lead pipe in the 1790s and Alexander Dick's brass presses of the 1890s to the large aluminium presses of today, looks at plants that opened this autumn, and shows where ABB robots could fit in stacking, packing and die handling.

Three extruded aluminium sections of the kind used for machine frames. Photo: Mike1024 / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How extrusion began with lead pipe and brass

Extrusion is older than aluminium as an industrial metal. In 1797 the English inventor Joseph Bramah patented a way to make pipe from soft metal: the metal was preheated and then forced through a die with a hand-driven plunger. In 1820 Thomas Burr built a hydraulic press for lead pipe, and the process went by the name "squirting." For a long time lead pipe for water and gas was the main thing these presses made, since lead is soft enough to push through a die at modest pressure.

An engraving of Joseph Bramah's hydrostatic press, the hydraulic principle later used to push metal through dies. Photo: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

The big change came in 1894, when Alexander Dick extended extrusion to copper and brass alloys. Those metals need much higher temperatures and pressures, and Dick's work made it possible to push brass rods and shapes through a die instead of casting or drawing them. Aluminium followed in the twentieth century. Hot extrusion heats the metal above its recrystallisation temperature, for aluminium roughly 300 to 600 °C, so it flows through the die without hardening. Steel extrusion only started in 1951.

The front of a four cavity aluminium extrusion die. Photo: Wizard191 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

A modern direct extrusion press works much as Dick's did. The billet goes into a container with a dummy block behind it, and a ram pushes the metal out through the die. Most hot extrusion uses horizontal hydraulic presses rated from 230 to 11,000 metric tons. After the press, the profile is stretched to straighten it, cut to length and often heat treated. Puller tables and saws took over some of that work, but much of the handling after the press, including loading profiles into baskets for the ageing oven, stayed manual for most of the twentieth century.

The back of the same extrusion die, where the metal is pushed in from the press. Photo: Wizard191 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The aluminium extrusion robot after the press

Plants are still being built. On 15 September 2026 Taber Extrusions held the opening of an $85 million expansion in Russellville, Arkansas, built around a 10,000-ton press for aerospace, defence and heavy industry. Taber says the press makes large single-piece profiles that replace multi-part assemblies, and it has been running since June. The company first announced the project at the Farnborough Airshow in July 2024 and broke ground in April 2025. In India, Fenesta commissioned a new aluminium extrusion plant in Rajasthan in early September. The same month the trade site AL Circle ran a piece arguing that the aluminium industry is losing knowledge along with its workers.

Aluminium extrusions hanging in an automatic booth while powder coating is sprayed onto them. Photo: Euro Quality Coatings / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The jobs after the press are heavy and repetitive. Cut profiles have to be picked off a cooling table and stacked in layers with spacers for the ageing oven, then unstacked, bundled and packed for shipping. Profiles can be several metres long, and their surfaces must stay unmarked, especially on anodised or painted sections for buildings. Robots with long vacuum or clamp grippers can keep a steady pace at this work, and a camera can check each layer before the next one goes on top.

Aluminium window profiles with protective film, which keeps finished surfaces from being marked in handling. Photo: Novacel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

I could not find a named ABB extrusion customer for this post, so this part describes how ABB robots could fit. Large arms such as the IRB 6700 have the reach and payload for long grippers and for stacking profiles into baskets. ABB's IRB 460 and IRB 660 palletizers are built for fast layer stacking and could load bundles or packed boxes at the end of the line. Where profiles move on conveyors, conveyor tracking lets the robot pick them on the move, and the whole cell can be simulated first in RobotStudio.

An ABB IRB 6700 lifts a large panel at dhp technology, the size of robot that could stack long profiles. Photo: ABB

Where extrusion automation goes next

In factories, the next steps are around the press itself. Die changes are hot and heavy work: a die has to come out of its oven and go into the press at temperature. Robots or automated die stores can shorten those changes and keep people away from the hottest part of the job. Robots can also feed and clear saw lines, deburr cut ends, or drill and machine profiles for window and solar frame makers. Our post on aluminium smelter robots covers the same metal at the start of the chain. At home, people see the result mostly without noticing it, in window frames, ladders and furniture.

The EasyGrinder robot picks parts from pallets, grinds them and stacks them again. Photo: ABB

Recycling and new markets will shape plants too. Electric cars use extruded crash beams and battery trays, and solar farms need large volumes of mounting rails. Many extruders want more recycled scrap in their billets, which puts more weight on sorting and checking material. Short runs for many customers mean frequent die and product changes, so a cell that can be reprogrammed quickly, for example with ABB's Wizard easy programming, is worth more than a fixed stacker built for one profile.

A fixed mounting structure holding a row of solar panels, one of the growing markets for aluminium profiles. Photo: Marta Victoria / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The open problems are cost, safety and skills. A stacking cell with long grippers, guarding and conveyors is a large investment, and smaller extruders with many short runs may struggle to make it pay. The area near a press is hot and full of heavy moving parts, so robots and people need clear zones and safety functions such as SafeMove. And if AL Circle is right that the industry is losing experienced people, plants will need staff who can run a press and also program a robot.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer, a robot built for fast layer stacking at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

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