Excavator Manufacturing: Steam Shovels to ABB Welders

An excavator looks like one machine, but most of what you see is welded steel: the track frame underneath, the revolving upper frame that carries the cab and counterweight, then the boom, the stick and the bucket. So excavator manufacturing is mostly cutting, welding and machining, with assembly and paint at the end. This post follows the trade from the first steam shovels to the hydraulic machines of the 1960s, then looks at how factories build excavators today, where ABB welding robots fit, and what the next few years may bring for big crawlers, mini excavators and the people who weld them.

A Komatsu PC 340 LC crawler excavator, with its boom, stick and bucket. Photo: Norbert Schnitzler / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

From Otis's steam shovel to the hydraulic excavator

William Otis patented his steam shovel in 1839, and after his death Oliver Smith Chapman kept developing it. Early shovels ran on rails and could only swing part of the way round, so crews laid temporary track as the work moved forward. Steel cable replaced chain hoists in the 1870s. In 1884 a full 360 degree revolving shovel appeared in England, and the Marion Steam Shovel Company was founded the same year. When the United States dug the Panama Canal, 102 steam shovels worked the cut, 77 of them built by Bucyrus and the rest by Marion.

President Theodore Roosevelt sitting on a steam shovel at the Panama Canal in 1906. Photo: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Cheaper diesel shovels pushed steam aside in the 1930s. After the Second World War, high-pressure hydraulic hoses let hydraulic excavators overtake cable machines: cylinders took over from winches, chains and ropes, and the bucket was now pulled toward the machine where the old shovels had pushed it away. In France, Poclain, founded by Georges Bataille in 1927 at Le Plessis-Belleville, brought out the TY45 in 1961. It turned a full 360 degrees on a three-wheeled undercarriage, and about 30,000 were built over 21 years of production.

A Poclain TY45 hydraulic excavator kept as a monument in Crépy-en-Valois, France. Photo: P.poschadel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 fr)

In heavy equipment, robots came in through welding, the slowest step and the one that needs the most skill. ABB's customer magazine described one case in 2008. Allt i Plåt, a family company in Småland, Sweden, makes cabs for mining, truck and forestry machines, and it could not find enough welders. It installed a welding cell from Andon Automation with an ABB robot. The 1,000 kg cab is clamped to a two-axis positioner that turns it into the best position, and the robot welds up to 600 metres of joints. A cab that used to take a whole shift now takes about three hours.

New excavators parked at Komatsu's excavator manufacturing and assembly plant in Birtley, England. Photo: David Dixon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Excavator manufacturing today: exports, mini machines and robot welding

Much of today's demand is coming from China. On 29 September 2026 the Global Times, citing the China Construction Machinery Association, reported that 191,557 excavators were sold in the first eight months of the year, up 24.2 percent. Exports reached 96,938 units and overtook domestic sales of 94,619. Sany told the paper that revenue from its mini excavators in Europe and the US rose more than 50 percent. In the US, John Deere said in January that a new factory in Kernersville, North Carolina will build future-generation excavators previously made in Japan.

Finished machines lined up outside the Komatsu plant on Durham Road, Birtley. Photo: Barbara Carr / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The welding in these plants is heavy work. Booms and sticks are long box sections of thick plate, and track frames and upper frames are large weldments with many passes on each joint. ABB's arc welding range covers this kind of part. Hollow-wrist arms such as the IRB 1660ID and IRB 2600ID keep the torch cable inside the arm, and ABB offers positioners with one or two extra axes, plus columns and booms that hang a robot over a big part. At STROS in the Czech Republic, an ABB IRB 1600ID on a track works with a positioner to weld building-site hoist masts that once needed three welders per shift.

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

We found no public ABB case study for an excavator boom line, so what follows is a likely fit and nothing more. A boom cell would pair a heavy positioner with one or two hollow-wrist arc welders, usually with seam tracking, because plate is never cut perfectly. A larger arm such as the IRB 6700 could load heavy brackets or grind weld toes. Programs for parts this big are normally built and checked offline in RobotStudio, and coordinated external axes keep the robot and the positioner moving together.

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

Where excavator factories go next

The product mix is moving toward smaller and electric machines. Deere is launching a new 40 P-Tier compact excavator at Equip Exposition this autumn, and Volvo CE has just added a straight boom option for an electric mini excavator. Small machines come in many variants and short runs, which suits big fixed welding lines badly. Collaborative welding, such as ABB's GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package, could handle low-volume brackets and attachment parts while full-size cells stay on high-volume booms and frames. Our post on truck manufacturing covers a similar shift in another heavy vehicle trade.

An ABB arc welding robot with a positioner that turns heavy parts. Photo: Ana 2016 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

If you own or hire a mini excavator for garden or farm work, you will see these changes as price and choice. Chinese exports at this level put pressure on Western makers to cut the cost of each machine, and welding is one of the few steps where automation can save a lot. Reshoring plans such as Deere's Kernersville move point the same way, since welding thick plate by hand is expensive in the US and Europe. More automation in seam tracking, grinding and inspection seems likely, though the timing will depend on each maker's volumes.

A Komatsu PC 50 MR mini excavator digging beside a house in Vermont. Photo: Artaxerxes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Cost comes first. A heavy positioner and two robots cost far more than a manual welding bay, and the payback needs steady volume. Fit-up is another problem: a skilled welder simply adjusts to thick plate cut slightly out of tolerance, while a robot needs sensing and good cutting upstream. Large moving parts and positioners also call for guarding and safety-rated monitoring. The welder shortage that pushed Allt i Plåt and STROS toward robots has not gone away, and plants still need people who can program, maintain and inspect the cells.

ABB's GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package on a welding table. Photo: ABB

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