Forging Robot History: ABB Arms From Anvil to Press

A forging robot spends its shift next to a furnace. It grips a steel billet glowing orange, carries it to a press or hammer, moves it from one die to the next and drops the finished part into a trim press, all before the metal cools too much to shape. People did this work with tongs for centuries. This post follows forging from the smith's anvil to steam hammers and drop forges, then to the robot cells running today, including a new automated line for forklift forks in Manchester. Along the way it looks at where ABB robots such as the IRB 6700 and the IRB 7600 family fit, and at what still makes forging hard to automate.

A rail-bound forging manipulator holds a glowing workpiece in a forge shop. Photo: Gabi Sonnenschein / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From the smith's anvil to the steam hammer

For most of history, forging meant a smith with a hammer and an anvil. The smith held the hot iron with tongs and struck it, often with a helper swinging a heavier sledge. Water power arrived in the 12th century and let forges run large trip hammers, so they could work bigger pieces of iron than any arm could manage. Someone still had to pull the glowing metal from the fire, hold it in place under the blows and judge by its color when it had cooled too much to work.

Two monks at work in the blacksmith shop at Mission Santa Barbara, California, around 1900, one holding the iron with tongs, the other swinging a sledge. Photo: C. C. Pierce / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Steam made the hammers bigger. James Watt described a steam hammer in 1784, but nobody built a working one until 1840, and in 1843 François Bourdon of France and James Nasmyth of Britain argued over who had invented it. By 1891 a hammer built by the Bethlehem Iron Company could deliver a 125 ton blow. On early steam hammers an operator worked the valves by hand to control each strike, while the crew around the die held and turned the hot stock. During the 20th century, mechanical and hydraulic presses took over most of this work.

Hammering out a draw bar on the steam drop hammer at the Santa Fe railroad shops in Albuquerque, 1943. Photo: Jack Delano, Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Drop forging with shaped dies turned out parts like crankshafts and connecting rods in volume, but the handling stayed manual for a long time. Workers lifted hot blanks from the furnace, set them in the die, turned them between blows and carried them on to the trim press. A 2003 ABB datasheet says the company had more than 10 years of forging automation behind it by then. It names the IRB 6400 as its forging robot, lists heat-insulated grippers for parts at up to 1,300 °C as standard equipment and shows a robot handling crankshafts at a press.

An ABB robot handles a glowing crankshaft forging at a press, from ABB's 2003 forging robots datasheet. Photo: ABB

Forging robots today, from Manchester to ABB's foundry arms

A modern closed-die forging line still follows the old sequence, with a machine at each step. Billets are cut, heated in a furnace or induction coil, and pressed through a preform, a blocker die and a finisher die. A trim press then cuts off the flash, the thin ring of excess metal squeezed out between the dies, and the part goes on to cool. Robots or rail-bound manipulators carry the metal between stations. An ABB foundry brochure describes crankshaft forging with steel billets weighing well over 300 kg, a load that calls for a heavy robot with special forging grippers.

A 1,000 ton closed die hot forging press beside a 176 ton trim press that removes the flash. Photo: Sam D. Wilbur / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The newest example in the news comes from England. On 21 September 2026 trade press reported that Cascade, which makes forklift attachments, has a fully automated hot forging line for forklift forks running at its plant in Openshaw, Manchester. Rhodes Interform designed and built it. A 100 tonne upset press compresses the steel, a 400 tonne bend and squeeze press forms the fork profile, and robots move the parts between the two. The line changes its own tools and holds thousands of stored recipes, and it replaced a manual bending process. Cascade's Jed Shaw said that "the ability to produce small-batch, high-variety products efficiently is critical."

A worker handles hot bar stock by hand at a Sutherland hot heading press. Photo: Sam D. Wilbur / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB sells several arms built for this kind of heat and weight. The IRB 6700 carries 150 to 300 kg with up to 3.2 m of reach and can be ordered with Foundry Plus 2, which seals the whole robot to IP67, adds a corrosion resistant coating and lets it stand up to high pressure steam washing. For years the IRB 7600 was ABB's heavy forging arm. Since 2024 the IRB 7710 and IRB 7720 have taken its place, with payloads up to 620 kg. Many of the same robots tend die casting machines, which we covered in our post on gigacasting.

Engineers with a robot from ABB's IRB 7710 and IRB 7720 family, which replaced the IRB 7600 and carries up to 620 kg. Photo: ABB

What forging robots still have to solve

Short runs are the first hurdle. A car plant may forge one crankshaft design for years, but a jobbing forge or a fork maker like Cascade switches parts often, and every switch means new dies, new gripper positions and new robot paths. Automatic tool changes and stored recipes help, and so does planning offline. Engineers usually build and test a forging cell in RobotStudio first, checking reach, cycle time and clearance to the press before a robot is bolted down. The stamping side of the same problem is in our post on press line stamping.

An ABB IRB 5710 with a heavy gripper, a large robot ABB lists for foundry and forging work. Photo: ABB

The environment is the other hurdle. A robot beside a forging press takes radiant heat, scale flying off the billet, graphite or water based die lubricant and the shock of every blow. Grippers take the worst of it, which is why ABB's forging datasheet listed grippers made of special heat-insulated materials as standard. The robot also cannot tell whether a billet left the furnace too cold unless the cell has a pyrometer or a camera to check it. Foundry Plus 2 protects the robot itself, and for smaller forges the price of a full cell is a hurdle of its own.

An ABB IRB 1300 with Foundry Plus 2 protection, sealed to IP67 against water and dirt. Photo: ABB

At home, forging will stay a hand craft. Hobby blacksmiths work with a coal or gas forge, a hammer and an anvil, the same tools the monks at Mission Santa Barbara used around 1900, and no home robot is coming for that job. Forged parts reach homes anyway, in hand tools, kitchenware and the crankshafts of the cars in the driveway. Factories are moving the other way. Cascade built its line for small batches and many fork types, which suggests robots can pay off even for short runs, so we expect more forges to put arms between the furnace, the press and the trim die.

A blacksmith demonstrates hand forging at an open day at Copped Hall, Essex, in 2025. Photo: Acabashi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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