Electroplating Robot: From Elkington to ABB Arms

An electroplating robot works in one of the harshest places in a factory: rows of open tanks with acids, cyanide salts or chromic acid, warm mist above them, and racks of parts that have to go in and out on time. This post follows the job from the first silver plating patents in Birmingham to hoist lines that move racks between tanks, and on to robots that hang parts on racks today. It also looks at where sealed ABB arms such as the IRB 4600 and IRB 6700 with Foundry Plus protection could fit around a plating line.

Workers at a copper electroplating line for printed circuit boards in a factory in China. Photo: Swoolverton / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How plating moved from Birmingham workshops to hoist lines

In 1805 the Italian chemist Luigi Brugnatelli used Volta's new pile to deposit gold, but his work went largely unused for about thirty years. In 1840 John Wright of Birmingham found that potassium cyanide made a working electrolyte for gold and silver, and his associates George and Henry Elkington took out the first electroplating patents that year. Their firm went on to build Birmingham's plating trade. A plaque on the old works on Newhall Street notes that Alexander Parkes, later the inventor of the first plastic, worked there for Elkington, Mason and Company around 1840 to 1850.

A blue plaque on the old Elkington works in Birmingham, where Alexander Parkes worked for Elkington, Mason and Company around 1840 to 1850. Photo: Spudgun67 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For decades the work was done by hand. Platers hung parts on wires or racks, lowered them into tar-lined wooden tanks, watched the current and lifted them out to rinse. The Norddeutsche Affinerie in Hamburg, which started production in 1876, is described as the first modern electroplating plant. Chrome plating arrived on cars in the 1920s, replacing nickel on bumpers and trim, and hard chromium spread through the two world wars and the aircraft industry.

Electroplated pieces made by Elkington and Co on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Photo: Elliott Brown / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The first automation moved the racks, and people still handled the parts. Plating shops lined tanks up in a row and added overhead hoists that lift a rack or barrel, carry it along the line and lower it into the next bath on a timer, so cleaning, rinsing, activation and plating happen in a fixed sequence. Small parts went into rotating barrels instead of onto racks. Those lines could handle thousands of kilograms of parts an hour, but people still hung each part on a rack hook and took it off again at the end.

A perforated plating barrel for small parts above a nickel plating tank. Photo: Encik Tekateki / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Where electroplating robots work today

Loading racks is where robots have started to take over. At Collini, a surface coating company in Dübendorf near Zurich, the integrator Roth Technik built a line in which four robots hang small metal parts on rack hooks. A camera helps each robot pick parts from a separating carousel, and a Baumer profile sensor on the arm finds every hook, because hooks on used racks are bent, shifted or missing. Two robot cells handle about 15 million parts a year. Researchers in Japan and at the University of Waterloo have studied the same rack problem.

Copper built up in rounded lumps on a part during electroplating, here made on purpose as decoration. Photo: Jan Helebrant / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Pressure on plating shops also comes from health and environmental rules. Hexavalent chromium, used in many chrome baths, is the most toxic form of chromium. On 28 September 2026 Uprise RI reported that Rhode Island regulators had issued a notice of intent to enforce against Electrolizing Inc., a Providence chrome plating shop, alleging that liquid waste had sat in containment pits since at least February 2020, and that federal workplace regulators had not yet released findings on whether workers inhaled hexavalent chromium. The same week, reports said the EPA's proposed rule on PFAS in chromium electroplating wastewater had slipped to a February 2027 target.

A worker at Rock Island Arsenal takes a sample of chrome solution from a holding tank, 1990. Photo: Lou Rivera / U.S. Department of Defense via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB has no published electroplating cell, but its protected robots are built for similar conditions. Foundry Plus 2 makes the whole arm IP67 from base to wrist, with an epoxy coating that resists corrosion and a design that survives high pressure steam washing. An IRB 4600 Foundry Plus could hang racks, and an IRB 6700 could move heavy fixtures between a loading station and the hoist line. ABB arms already dip parts into baths in other trades: an IRB 6600 dips wax trees into slurry at Franklin Bronze and Alloy. Our post on hot-dip galvanizing robots covers a related bath process.

An ABB IRB 6600 dipping wax pattern trees into slurry to build investment casting shells at Franklin Bronze and Alloy, Pennsylvania. Photo: ABB

What comes next for robots in plating shops

The likely next step is fewer people standing over the tanks. Racking and unracking, inspection after plating and handling of heavy parts are the jobs where robots fit first, while the hoist line keeps doing the dipping. Variation makes it hard: racks wear, parts nest or tangle, and coatings build up on hooks, so a cell needs vision, sensors and a way to relearn positions. Programs for these cells can be tested in RobotStudio before they run next to live tanks.

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

I think safety is the best argument for automation in plating. Taking workers away from mist, splashes and contaminated racks lowers their exposure, which matters in a trade where hexavalent chromium is still used. The EPA lists it as a hazardous air pollutant, and chrome lines run wet scrubbers to catch the mist from baths kept at 35 to 65 °C. A robot near open baths still needs protection itself: sealed joints, corrosion-resistant coatings and cables that survive acid vapour. Chemistry is moving too, since trivalent chromium baths are less toxic and less strictly regulated, and robots will have to handle both kinds of lines for years.

A white ABB foundry robot works in steam at a Bühler die casting cell. Photo: ABB

For small job shops, cost and skills are the slower problems. Many plating shops run short batches with dozens of rack types, so a robot cell has to be easy to retrain and cheap enough to justify. Integrators already offer vision-guided loading, and protected arms like ABB's Foundry Plus models exist, but most shops will need help to program and maintain them. At home, the effect would show up in the plated taps, handles and electronics people buy.

The Elkington and Co display in the Birmingham History Galleries, with electroplated metalwork from the firm. Photo: Elliott Brown / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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