Hot Stamping Robot: Boron Steel and ABB Press Arms

A hot stamping robot handles steel at around 900 °C. On a press hardening line it takes a boron steel blank from the furnace and places it in a water-cooled die, where the part is formed and cooled in the same tool. The result is the ultra-high-strength steel that Hyundai uses for center pillars, side sills and roof rails, the parts that keep a passenger compartment from deforming in a crash. This post follows the process from cold stamping and a Swedish patent to Saab, Volvo and today's lines at Gestamp, looks at where ABB press robots could fit, and covers what still makes hot blanks hard to automate.

Visitors at Schuler's Hot Stamping TechCenter in Göppingen, with die sets in front of the press, 2016. Photo: NLKessler / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From cold presses to a patent in Luleå

Car bodies were traditionally stamped cold: flat steel sheet goes into a press at room temperature and comes out as a roof, a door or a fender, as described in our post on press line stamping. The strongest steels do not take to this well. Their formability is generally lower than that of milder grades, and springback and die wear cause trouble because the forming stresses and contact pressures are higher. Cold-formed high-strength and ultra-high-strength steels start at tensile strengths of about 600 to 1,400 megapascals, and complex shapes in ultra-high-strength steel cannot be made with regular cold stamping.

The 200-metre body press hall at Daimler-Benz in Sindelfingen, May 1956. Photo: Rolf Unterberg / Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F003554-0003 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)

Press hardening was developed in Luleå, Sweden, by Norrbottens Järnverk, the ironworks known as NJA. It filed the patent application in 1973 and was granted the patent in 1977, and the first products were farm parts that needed wear resistance. Cars followed in 1984, when the Saab 9000 got press-hardened side impact beams in its doors, four parts in all. The uncoated blanks were almost half as thick as a cold-stamped beam. Door beams remained the main use into the mid-1990s, and about 6 million of them were produced in 1996.

A Saab 9000 CS; the 9000 was the first car to get press-hardened door beams, in 1984. Photo: Indie102 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Crash tests then raised the pressure on carmakers. Euro NCAP was formed at the end of 1996, and in 1998 the Volvo S80 and Ford Focus got press-hardened bumper beams. That year the French steelmaker Usinor developed an aluminium-silicon coated steel sold as Usibor 1500, named for its typical tensile strength of 1,500 megapascals. The Volvo XC90 of 2002 used ten press-hardened or roll-formed parts weighing 37 kg, about 7 percent of its body in white, and in the 2005 Volkswagen Passat roughly 19 percent of the body by weight was press-hardened steel.

A first-generation Volvo XC90, sold in China as the XC Classic, in Chongqing, 2016. Photo: Navigator84 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Inside a hot stamping line today

On a line like this, a robot takes a blank from the stack and a positioner sets it on the rollers of a roller hearth furnace, which heats it until the steel turns austenitic, about 900 to 950 °C for boron steel. Infrared sensors check the temperature, and a robot with active gripper tooling places the blank in the die. How long this transfer takes matters for part quality. The press then stays closed for about 6 to 12 seconds while water-cooled tools quench the part, which leaves the die at 300 to 390 °F (about 150 to 200 °C). A typical 22MnB5 steel comes out about 2.5 times stronger.

AP&T's press hardening line for tool try-outs and research in Ulricehamn, Sweden, 2014. Photo: Karl-Johan Anjou / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

India shows how quickly demand can grow. On 8 September 2026 Gestamp India told BusinessLine that hot-stamped steel in an average Indian-made passenger car has risen sixfold in six years, from about 10 kg to around 60 kg, and now makes up about 15 percent of the body structure, with even entry-level cars using it as Bharat NCAP crash ratings spread. That week Gestamp opened a plant at Bhagapura in Gujarat with two hot-stamping lines, giving it five in India with two more being installed. Hyundai Motor Group, writing on 22 September 2026, described the same process for its center pillars, side sills and roof rails.

A Tata Altroz at the Geneva International Motor Show, 2019. Photo: Matti Blume / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB's StampWorld brochure says the company has automated more than 900 press lines worldwide with over 4,000 Doppin feeders and 3,000 robots. It lists hot stamping solutions next to complete cold lines, robotic stacking for blanking lines and StampPack, a standard package for automating press cells. StampApp, the software at the core of StampPack, lets staff teach the robot without programming knowledge. ABB's newest press tending robot, the IRB 6760, carries up to 200 kg with a reach of up to 3.5 m and can run up to 15 strokes a minute on mid-sized press lines when fitted with ABB's carbon-fibre tooling boom.

ABB robots moving panels between presses on a stamping line. Photo: ABB (StampWorld brochure)

Where hot stamping is heading

Parts are getting bigger. In 2013 the Acura MDX became the first car with a hot-stamped door ring, a tailor welded blank made from two sub-blanks that saved about 6.2 kg per car, and the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica's door ring used five sub-blanks. Gestamp's new Gujarat plant is equipped for its Ges-Gigastamping family of parts. Bigger blanks mean more weight for the robot that carries them from furnace to die. ABB's IRB 7720 handles up to 620 kg, comes with optional Foundry Plus protection and is aimed at high-speed press tending of car doors and frames, which makes it a possible candidate. Heat is familiar ground for ABB from forging, where its 2003 datasheet listed heat-isolated grippers for parts at up to 1,300 °C.

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

Households see hot stamping as crash ratings. BusinessLine linked the sixfold rise in India to Bharat NCAP and five-star crash ratings, and Gestamp India says it was a supplier partner on the Tata Altroz's five-star programme. The strength has a cost for rescuers. When boron steel came into common use in European cars in the mid-2000s, its high strength and hardness resisted many of the hydraulic rescue tools in use at the time, so freeing people trapped in a wreck got harder with the tools crews had then.

A U.S. Army paratrooper uses a hydraulic tool to remove a car door during extraction training. Photo: Staff Sgt. John Yountz, U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Speed is one open problem. A cold press line tended by an IRB 6760 can run up to 15 strokes a minute, while a hot stamping press has to stay shut for 6 to 12 seconds to quench each part, and the furnace has to be kept hot with gas, electricity or both. Hyundai Steel is working on the carbon side, with a hybrid of electric arc furnace and blast furnace steelmaking that it says cuts emissions by about 20 percent. A hot line also combines a furnace, robots, die cooling and laser trimming, so running one takes broad skills, and software like StampApp, which lets staff teach robots without code, is one way to lower that bar.

An ABB IRB 7710 or IRB 7720 robot set up for friction stir welding. Photo: ABB

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