Coffee Machine Manufacturing: ABB Robots on the Line

Coffee machine manufacturing grew from percolators and the 1901 Bezzera patent to Mr. Coffee and Breville. See how machines are built and where ABB robots fit.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/20/20265 min read

Coffee machine manufacturing covers a wide range of products, from an aluminium Moka pot that costs a few dollars to an espresso machine with a pump, a boiler and a grinder. All of them hold hot water, steam and pressure close to a person, so each one has to be tested before it leaves the factory. This post follows the coffee machine from stove top percolators and the first espresso patents to the drip makers of the 1970s, uses two recent stories from September and October 2026 as the news hook, and asks where ABB robots could fit on an assembly line.

Aluminium Moka pot with its lid open and coffee bubbling on a glowing electric hob

A Bialetti Moka Express steaming on a hob, the stove top pot Alfonso Bialetti launched in 1933. Photo: Berteun Damman / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

From stove top pots to espresso patents

Percolation has a long paper trail. Count Rumford described designs close to drip brewing in 1813, and a Paris tinsmith, Joseph Laurens, made the first modern percolator that could be heated on a kitchen stove in 1819. James Nason received the first US patent for a percolator in 1865, and Illinois farmer Hanson Goodrich got the patent for the stove top design still recognised today in 1889. By 1905 General Electric was publishing Coffee Making by Electricity, and electric percolators like the one in the photograph followed.

Glass coffee percolator with a pale yellow handle and base standing on a wooden table

A glass electric percolator with a yellow base, made in the USA around 1950. Photo: Rote Fingur / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Espresso started with steam. Angelo Moriondo patented a steam driven device in 1884, which brewed in bulk. Luigi Bezzera filed improvements in December 1901, and the patent was granted in June 1902. Desiderio Pavoni bought it in 1903 and founded La Pavoni. The photograph shows a Bezzera espresso bar at the 1906 Milan International Exposition. Because these machines were steam driven, pressure was part of the design from the start, and every maker had to think about leaks and safe operation.

Black and white photo of a long espresso counter with staff behind it under a Bezzera sign in an exhibition hall

The Bezzera espresso bar at the 1906 Milan International Exposition. Photo: unknown photographer via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Three changes pushed coffee machines toward factory production. Achille Gaggia developed the lever machine in 1945, and the Faema E61 brought the pump driven design in 1961. In 1972 Vincent Marotta and Samuel Glazer started Mr. Coffee in Cleveland, and its drip maker sold more than a million units by April 1974 and in 1973 Marotta recruited Joe DiMaggio as its advertising spokesman. Percolators faded in the early 1970s as electric drip makers spread. A home appliance sold by the million needs repeatable assembly, which is work a robot does well.

White electric drip coffee maker with an empty glass carafe next to a blender on a counter

A white drip coffee maker with a glass carafe in a kitchen, the kind of machine Mr. Coffee made common. Photo: ParentingPatch / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

What a modern coffee machine needs on the line

A modern coffee machine is more complicated than any of those early models. An espresso machine needs a pump, a heater, valves, a brew group and a steam wand, and a bean to cup model adds a grinder and a control board. Each unit has to work the first time it is switched on, so end of line testing matters. The market is also changing. In an October 2026 Financial Times piece, Bialetti is a case study in how capsule machines wore down the Moka pot. Its 2025 revenue still rose 11 percent to 166 million euros, with just under 1,000 employees and nearly 4.5 million stove top pots sold.

Stainless steel espresso machine with black cups and glasses stacked on top and portafilters below

A two group espresso machine in a cafe, with cups warming on top. Photo: MichalPL / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

New launches show how much is packed into one product. Daily Coffee News reported on 30 September 2026 that Breville had launched the Spiral Luxe Auto Pour Over at $599.95. It combines a grinder with 40 millimetre flat burrs, a conical dripper and a water spout that moves in a spiral over the grounds, and it lets users edit grind, ratio, water temperature and the time between pours. Each of those functions adds a part to buy, fit and test, and a line has to handle it all.

Steel Hamilton Beach coffee maker with a lit display and a red banded carafe on a granite counter

A programmable drip coffee maker with a thermal carafe on a kitchen counter. Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB has not published a coffee machine line, so this section describes possibilities. The closest relative is appliance testing. At Electrolux in Curitiba, Brazil, an ABB GoFa cobot works at a gas leak and electrical test station on a refrigerator line. A coffee machine needs a similar check: fill it, heat it, run the pump and watch for leaks and wrong temperatures. At Electrolux's Dudley Park plant in Australia, a 2018 report described six ABB robots picking and packing ovens, using IRB 6700 and IRB 2600 arms. The same cell design could suit boxed coffee machines.

White ABB GoFa cobot arm at a test station on an appliance line with a technician nearby

An ABB GoFa cobot at a gas leak and electrical test station on Electrolux's refrigerator line in Curitiba, Brazil. Photo: ABB

Fitting the housing is another job. A coffee machine has many screws holding together a tank, a base and a panel, and ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000 was the robot ABB used for its own screwdriving cell. It has a small payload and works near people, so it suits low volume models and tool changes, and a new screw pattern means a program change rather than a new machine.

Dual arm ABB YuMi robot working at a bench beside a person in a white lab coat

ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000, the robot ABB used for its own screwdriving cell, working beside a lab technician. Photo: ABB

Where coffee machines and their factories go next

At the end of the line, machines go into boxes and onto pallets. An ABB IRB 660 palletizer is built for boxes of this kind, and pallet patterns change in software when a carton size changes. Our guide to ABB robot use cases lists jobs like this one, and a robot programmed in RobotStudio can be tested in simulation before it reaches the floor. ABB does appear on the coffee side already: our post on coffee capsule packing covers robots handling pods.

Orange ABB palletizing robot lifting a box onto a stack of boxes on a pallet

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

The next machines will add more sensors, smarter recipes and more automatic cleaning, and each addition makes assembly and testing harder. A compact IRB 1200, launched in a new generation in 2025, could feed a press or a fixture for small metal parts, though ABB has not described a coffee machine plant doing this. Three open problems stand in the way of more robots. Cost matters for makers with many models and small batches, since a cell has to pay back before the next model arrives. Skills matter too, because someone has to program and maintain the cell. Safety matters wherever a robot works beside people, and ABB's SafeMove software is one way to limit speed and zones.

Compact white ABB IRB 1200 robot arm with its controller on a factory floor

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, a compact six axis arm for fast small part work. Photo: ABB

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