Fire Extinguisher Manufacturing: ABB Robots and Welding

Fire extinguisher manufacturing looks simple from the outside: a steel or aluminium cylinder, a valve, some agent and a pressure gauge. In practice each unit is a small pressure vessel that has to sit on a wall for years and then work on the first pull. That is why welding, leak testing and traceability matter so much on the line. This post follows the product from an 1816 copper vessel to the first factory floors, looks at a September 2026 recall of home fire sprays, and asks where ABB's arc welding and cobot welding robots could fit.

A brass Pyrene extinguisher clamped to a tank at Bovington, the kind of carbon tetrachloride unit Pyrene sold. Photo: DaveOnFlickr / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

From a copper vessel to the first extinguisher factories

Captain George William Manby demonstrated the first portable pressurised extinguisher in 1816, which he called the Extincteur. It was a copper vessel holding about 3 gallons of pearl ash solution, pressurised with compressed air. In 1881 the English firm Read & Campbell patented a cartridge-operated extinguisher that used water or a water-based solution. In 1904 Aleksandr Loran in Russia invented the chemical foam extinguisher. Each design changed the agent, but every one of them still needed a sealed metal body that could hold pressure, and that body is the part a robot can build.

The assembly department at the Pyrene Manufacturing Company's New York plant, December 1918. Photo: US National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The Pyrene Manufacturing Company filed a patent for using carbon tetrachloride against fires in 1910 and patented a small portable extinguisher in 1911. A set of photographs from December 1918 in the US National Archives shows its New York plant. In the parts department, rows of workers cut tubes to length and slotted or threaded the small brass pieces. In the assembly department, pumps were put together and fitted into shells by hand, all along benches. The photographs show benchwork, with each joint in the hands of a worker. The cards filed with the pictures mention inspectors testing parts, so quality checks were part of the job even then.

The parts department at the Pyrene plant in 1918, where tubes were cut and small brass parts made. Photo: US National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Walter Kidde's company introduced the carbon dioxide extinguisher in 1924, after Bell Telephone asked for an agent that would not conduct electricity on switchboard fires. The first unit was a tall metal cylinder holding 7.5 lb of CO2, with a wheel valve, a woven brass hose and a horn nozzle. High pressure raised the bar for the cylinder itself. Carbon tetrachloride units were withdrawn in the 1950s, while the sealed, pressure-holding body stayed. Today's automation sources put welding of that body at the centre of the line.

A Walter Kidde CO2 extinguisher made for Bell Telephone in 1928, with its wheel valve and horn nozzle. Photo: Firetech117 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A recall, and where robot welding fits today

The news hook is a recall. On 10 September 2026, Prepared Hero recalled about 31,000 Fire Spray canisters in the US, covering only the batch with date code 09/2024 on the base. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission says the canisters can deteriorate and rupture and may fail during a fire. The company has received nine reports of canisters exploding or deteriorating in storage, and no injuries have been reported. CPSC has not said what causes the problem, so the recall says only that a single batch matters: one date code, 31,000 units.

A red CO2 extinguisher on a tiled wall, a modern pressure vessel that must work on the first pull. Photo: Eunosfire986 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Makers have been automating the body for years. A 2015 conference paper describes a PLC-controlled welding device that handles both the long seam and the girth weld on extinguisher cylinders in one clamping. The Czech firm BOKI lists fire extinguishers among the applications for its robotized welding workstations, and the Italian maker Pii says its extinguisher production is fully automated with several robotic machines. A Lucas punching machine is said to form and cut both halves of an extinguisher in about 15 seconds. None of those sources names ABB, and the supplier claims are the companies' own, so treat them as indications rather than audited figures.

An ABB arc welding robot with a positioner turning a large steel part in a workshop. Photo: Ana 2016 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB is not named in any source I found as a fire extinguisher supplier, so this is only a possibility. Its arc welding robots with positioners, such as the IRB 2600 family, are built for repeated seams on round parts, and the GoFa CRB 15000 cobot with the Arc Welding Package and Easy Teach Device lets a welder guide the torch once and have the cobot repeat the weld. Our posts on welding cobots and hydraulic cylinder manufacturing cover the same kind of round pressure parts.

A welder guiding the torch of an ABB GoFa cobot in the Arc Welding Package. Photo: ABB

What comes next for extinguisher lines

For factories, the next steps are likely inspection and records. Cameras and force sensing could check every weld, and a robot could mark each unit with a code so a recall can be narrowed to a single batch. A recall of 31,000 units from one date code shows why that matters, because the smaller the batch, the cheaper the recall. Mixed batches need quick changeover between cylinder sizes, which suits cobots such as GoFa better than a line fixed for one size. A hand-guided program for one size can be copied and adjusted for the next, which saves setup time on short runs.

An ABB IRB 2600 industrial robot at work in a production cell. Photo: ABB

Fire sprays like the recalled ones show that households now buy small, cheap canisters as well as classic cylinders, and small runs of many sizes are where fixed machines struggle. The open problems are cost, safety and skills. A welding robot does not remove the need for a pressure test, and rules for pressure equipment still apply to whoever builds it. ABB's SafeMove software supports safe work beside people on the shop floor.

A US Navy sailor in a fire proximity suit rushes to a simulated aircraft fire carrying a CO2 extinguisher, 2004. Photo: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The skills gap is real too. A small extinguisher maker may not have a robot programmer, and a new cell has to be planned before anything is bought. Engineers can build and test a weld path in RobotStudio before the cell exists, and ABB's Wizard easy programming and hand guiding lower the bar for welders who are not coders. A product that must work on the day it is needed benefits from welds that repeat the same way every time.

Teaching a weld with the ABB Easy Teach Device on the GoFa torch. Photo: ABB

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