Escalator Manufacturing: Truss Welding and ABB

Escalator manufacturing is mostly heavy steel work, hidden behind the shiny steps. Every escalator rides on a long welded steel truss, carries a looped chain of die-cast steps and has its drive station packed into the top end. This post follows escalators from the first moving ramp at Coney Island in 1896 to today's large factories in China and Europe. It also covers the 2026 merger news that is reshaping the industry, how robots already weld trusses, where ABB robots could fit on these lines, and what is still hard to automate.

Crews lower escalator truss sections into the 47th Street passenger wellway in New York, September 2018. Photo: MTA Capital Construction Mega Projects / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

From Coney Island ramps to the first escalator factories

Patents came long before working machines. Nathan Ames, a patent attorney from Saugus, Massachusetts, patented "revolving stairs" in 1859, but nobody built one. Jesse W. Reno patented his "Endless Conveyor or Elevator" on 15 March 1892 and in 1896 installed a working version beside the Old Iron Pier at Coney Island. It was little more than an inclined belt with cast iron cleats, running up a 25 degree slope. A few months later the same unit was tried for a month on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

A wooden escalator built in 1902, still at Macy's Herald Square in New York in 2022. Photo: Don Ramey Logan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Charles Seeberger bought George Wheeler's patents and worked on flat moving stairs from 1895. He teamed up with the Otis Elevator Company in 1899, and their first commercial escalator won first prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. Seeberger trademarked the word "escalator" that year, so rivals had to sell Motorstairs and Electric Stairways instead. In London, Harrods opened a moving staircase on 16 November 1898 made from 224 linked pieces of leather belt, and staff handed nervous riders smelling salts and cognac at the top.

Wooden treads and the lower landing of an Otis L type escalator at Wynyard station, Sydney, installed in 1931. Photo: Milesli / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Early escalators used a lot of wood, and some wooden Reno type escalators ran at Boston's Downtown Crossing station until about 1991. The modern design settled over the following decades. A steel truss carries the tracks, the top landing holds the motor and main drive gear, and the bottom landing holds the return gear. The steps became solid one piece castings of aluminium or steel, and on most models built after 1950 they are cleated so the treads mesh with comb plates at each end.

An escalator's step band and frame pictured in Cassier's Magazine, 1911. Photo: Smithsonian Libraries via Wikimedia Commons (no known restrictions)

Truss welding lines and the 2026 shake up

This year's big news is about who owns the factories. In April 2026 KONE agreed to buy TK Elevator in a deal valued at about 29.4 billion euros, and Schindler said it would challenge the merger with competition authorities. On 1 October 2026 the Economic Times, citing Reuters, reported that KONE was preparing to sell most of TK Elevator's European business, including escalators and service, to ease those concerns. A few days later Mitsubishi Electric and Fujitec were reported to be looking at a bid. The deal is not expected to close before the second quarter of 2027.

KONE escalators at the Marriott Marquis in New York, fitted in 2021 inside the original truss. Photo: Baron Maddock / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Whoever ends up owning the plants, much of the heavy work inside them is welding. The truss is a long frame of chords, cross members and plates, and it is usually welded by hand. Chinese maker XIZI Heavy Industry described the problem in a 2022 Beckhoff case study: its welders worked in heat with poor ventilation, because airflow spoils the seams. Beijing firm WTEC built XIZI a 25 metre robot welding line, with a welding robot on a gantry axis, that loads and welds the trusses, beams and the fixing plates for aprons and glass clamps, and records the settings of every weld.

An escalator with its steps removed at Jackson Square in Hamilton, Ontario, showing the tracks inside the truss. Photo: Draconichiaro / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

We found no published ABB escalator line, so what follows is how ABB robots could fit. An IRB 2600ID or IRB 1600ID arc welding robot, with its cables run inside the arm, could ride a track along a truss, and MultiMove lets one controller move two robots and a positioner on the same part. On the step side, foundry protected robots such as the IRB 6700 Foundry Plus could take aluminium steps out of a die casting machine. ABB already works with lift makers: an IRB 2600 is the arm in Schindler's R.I.S.E robot, covered in our elevator installation post.

An ABB IRB 1600ID robot welding a hoist mast section on a positioner at STROS in the Czech Republic. Photo: ABB

What comes next for escalator factories

A large share of production now sits in China. Schindler, the world's largest escalator maker, opened what it called the world's largest escalator factory in Jiading, Shanghai, on 21 May 2014. Plants that build for many markets have to handle many variants, with different rises, widths, balustrades and outdoor versions. Robots that weld from offline programs suit that mix, because a new truss length can be planned in RobotStudio instead of on the shop floor.

ABB arc welding robots at work on a vehicle frame, from ABB's Robotic Arc Welding brochure. Photo: ABB

Few homes have an escalator, but most people ride one in a shop, station or airport, and the quality of the factory work decides how often it stops. Escalators typically climb at 30 or 35 degrees, move at 0.3 to 0.9 metres per second and can rise more than 18 metres, so each truss and step chain carries real loads for years. Assembling the step band, which means fitting rollers, chain links and step fixings, is a possible job for cobots such as the GoFa CRB 15000 working beside a fitter, though we found no maker that has published such a station.

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

Size is the first obstacle. A full truss is too long for most standard robot cells, so lines need tracks, gantries and big fixtures, and those only pay off at high volume. Welds on a load bearing frame need certified procedures and records, which is why XIZI logs every seam. A cell where people load long steel parts needs light curtains or zone monitoring such as ABB's SafeMove. Factories also need people who understand both welding and robot programming, and those people are hard to find.

Escalator replacement at I. P. Pavlova metro station in Prague, with the drive and step chain exposed, 2007. Photo: Aktron / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com