Hair Dryer Manufacturing: From Godefroy to ABB Robots

Hair dryer manufacturing turns a coil of wire, a small motor, a fan and a plastic shell into a product that most households own. The first dryers were not handheld at all, and the line that builds them today still relies on careful winding, molding and electrical testing. This post follows the hair dryer from a salon bonnet of around 1890 to the handheld models of the 1920s and the compact travel dryers in the news this autumn. It then looks at where ABB robots fit on a dryer line, and says plainly where that is a possibility rather than a project.

A hooded salon dryer on a stand, a Wella Climazon 2 from the 2010s. Photo: Pittigrilli / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From a gas stove bonnet to a handheld dryer

The French hairdresser Alexandre Godefroy is credited with the first hair dryer, and sources give 1888 or 1890 for his invention. It was a large bonnet in which the customer sat, connected to the chimney pipe of a gas stove. It was not portable, and it was not handheld. Godefroy, who lived from 1852 to 1933, later built an electric dryer with a hose on a floor stand. The point is that drying began as a fixed piece of salon equipment tied to a heat source, and the idea of a dryer that you could hold took roughly three more decades to arrive.

Alexandre Ferdinand Godefroy beside the first electric hair dryer he built, with a hose and a stand. Photo: Jojo17 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Gabriel Kazanjian's 1911 US patent (1912 in some sources) is often cited for an early electric dryer. Handheld electric dryers appeared around 1920, though some sources say 1915. The names usually credited are the National Stamping and Electric Works, which sold its dryers under the White Cross brand, then the Racine Universal Motor Company and Hamilton Beach. These early models were heavy, weighing roughly two pounds, and they had problems with overheating and electric shock. A dryer held close to the head and often used near water needs safe wiring, which is why electrical testing still ends every production line.

A mid-20th-century portable electric hair dryer on display at the Malay Heritage Centre. Photo: Qhairy / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Inside, the basic design has changed less than the shell. Most dryers use a coil of nichrome wire wound around an insulating board, often mica, placed between the air inlet and outlet, and a motor and fan push air across it. One patent describes notches cut in the board so that the wire sits in slots during winding. The plastic shell is typically injection molded, and the halves are often joined with snap fasteners, so the shell closes without many screws. Thin foil heating elements used in some models are fragile, and an older patent notes they are hard to mount rigidly and need careful handling during manufacturing.

A Braun Silencio 1000 hair dryer with its case opened, showing the heating coil. Photo: Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Dryer lines today and where ABB fits

Factories have automated the parts that suit a machine. A Chinese heater equipment maker says its winding machines are used for hair dryer heating elements, which is a vendor claim rather than an independent source. One patent describes a combination coil and frame heater designed so that a variable heating unit can be built for automated production. One source notes that the motor and fan often arrive at the plant already assembled, so the dryer line is mostly heater, wiring, shell and test.

Nichrome resistance wire strung on a frame for a DIY heat press, the same wire type used in dryers. Photo: Stepan Drunks / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Recent news shows the product is still changing. Dyson's Supersonic debuted in 2016 at 399 dollars. This autumn Dyson launched the Supersonic Travel, which it describes as 32 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than the standard Supersonic, with universal voltage and intelligent heat control. It also released the Airsmooth hot air brush and the Corrale CoolShine straightener, which Dyson says can cause up to 29 percent less damage, a claim not independently checked here. More models and sizes mean more variants for a plant to build.

Dyson Supersonic hair dryers and attachments on a store display in 2017. Photo: FASTILY / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

No ABB hair dryer project is documented in the sources used here, so this part is a possibility. The nearest real case is on a different appliance. An ABB GoFa cobot runs a gas leak and electrical test station on Electrolux's refrigerator line in Curitiba, Brazil. A hair dryer has the same final step, an electrical safety check before packing, and a cobot can present each dryer to the tester the same way every time.

An ABB GoFa cobot at a gas leak and electrical test station on Electrolux's refrigerator line in Curitiba, Brazil. Photo: ABB

Small parts are the other fit. ABB's dual arm YuMi IRB 14000 handles small components at a bench, such as switches, cords and strain reliefs. The compact IRB 1200 can tend a molding press or a winding station, and the IRB 360 FlexPicker can pack finished dryers or accessories such as nozzles and diffusers at speed. None of this is exotic for ABB, and none of it needs a new kind of robot, which already builds arms for appliance factories, as our post on home appliance manufacturing explains.

ABB YuMi assembling small parts beside a lab worker. Photo: ABB

What comes next for dryers and robots

Dryers are moving toward smaller motors, travel sizes and higher heat control, and each change adds models and shortens production runs, which the new Dyson lineup shows. At the packing end, an IRB 360 FlexPicker program can switch with the model that arrives. Short runs favor flexible robot cells over fixed machines, because a cobot's program can be changed for a new model without rebuilding the cell. Repair is another open question. When a dryer is sealed shut, it is hard to fix, which connects to our post on the right to repair for home robots.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items at high speed. Photo: ABB

Programs for a dryer cell can be built and tested in simulation first, which saves line time when a new model arrives. The open problems for factories are cost and skills, since few plants have staff for vision and gripper design, and a cheap consumer product leaves little room for an expensive cell. For homes, no robot that dries hair turned up in the research for this post. Our post on the hair washing robot shows how far salon robots have gotten with the washing step.

Engineers share a robot cell design through RobotStudio Cloud. Photo: ABB

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