HVAC Ductwork Fabrication with ABB Robots

Look above the ceiling tiles in almost any office or data centre and you will find sheet metal ducts. Ductwork fabrication is the trade that makes those ducts, and most of it still happens in sheet metal shops where people cut, fold, seal and weld galvanized steel by the job. This post follows the work from tinsmiths with hand shears to coil lines and spiral machines, then to the robots now appearing in duct shops. The news hook is the cooling boom around AI data centres. It also looks at where ABB robots such as GoFa and the IRB 1520ID could fit, and what still makes duct work hard to automate.

Exposed galvanized ductwork, with a rectangular trunk narrowing into a round duct, under a hall roof at the OC Fairground. Photo: Eric Polk / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How tinsmiths and sheet metal shops made ducts

Ducts grew out of the tinsmith's trade. Tinsmiths have worked in America since 1720, cutting tinplate and sheet iron with big shears fixed in a bench and hand snips, shaping it over stakes and joining seams with soldering irons heated in a fire pot. They made pails, pans and coffee pots, and as stoves and furnaces spread, they also made pipes to carry smoke and warm air. Demand grew in the 19th century, and shops brought in hand powered machines to speed up cutting and folding.

A tinsmith cuts sheet metal in his workshop in Japan, around 1910, on a hand tinted glass slide. Photo: University of Victoria Libraries via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In Toledo, Ohio, on January 25, 1888, workers founded the Tin, Sheet Iron and Cornice Workers' International Association, later the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, whose members fabricate and install heating and air conditioning work. Air conditioning made ducts much bigger business. Willis Carrier designed his first air conditioning system for a Brooklyn printing plant in 1902, and from then on buildings needed large, carefully sized ducts to move cooled air.

Willis Carrier in 1915, whose 1902 cooling system for a Brooklyn printing plant started modern air conditioning. Photo: Carrier Corporation via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Machines took over the simple shapes first. Today, galvanized steel is the standard duct material. Round duct is made on a continuous spiral forming machine, which winds a strip of steel into a tube and locks the seam as it goes. Rectangular duct is usually fabricated to suit each job, often in 4 ft sections. Coil lines unroll galvanized steel, cut it to length, notch it and form the seams, and CNC plasma tables cut the flat patterns for fittings. Elbows, transitions and the sealing of seams still take skilled hands. Sealing usually means brushing or spraying a water based paste onto every seam, a messy job that a robot with a dispensing nozzle could do more evenly.

The workshop of the Shubenacadie Tinsmith Museum in Nova Scotia, with hand tools and machines on the benches. Photo: MediaKyle / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Data centres, grease ducts and robot welders

Data centres are pushing demand. On October 1, LG Electronics announced its first US factory for chillers that cool AI data centres, a 350,000 square foot plant in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, due to start production in the first half of 2027 with more than 150 jobs. Every one of those cooling systems needs ductwork, air handlers and fittings around it. ACHR News, the HVAC trade paper, has been running stories about what comes after local data centre moratoriums and how AI driven demand planning reaches contractors.

Rows of cooling fan units at a data centre, the kind of equipment that drives demand for HVAC work. Photo: Rsparks3 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

On October 7, ACHR News reported that SMACNA, the sheet metal contractors' association, had released an updated kitchen ventilation standard. The second edition, put out for public review in April, covers hoods, grease ducts, non grease ducts and duct enclosures for commercial kitchens. Grease ducts must be welded liquid tight, which is exactly the kind of long, repeated seam that welding robots handle well. Tighter standards also mean more checking of seams and sealant, a job vision systems can help with.

An airman feeds sheet metal into a forming machine in a US Air Force sheet metal shop. Photo: U.S. Air Force via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB has not announced a duct fabrication project that we found, so its role is a possibility. The IRB 1520ID is an arc welding robot with its hose package run through the arm, which suits long seams on duct sections. The GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package lets a welder guide the torch by hand to teach a weld, then lets the cobot repeat it, which fits the small batches of fittings most duct shops make. ABB robots already tend press brakes, as in our post on press brake bending, and could fold duct panels or stack finished sections at the end of a coil line.

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

Where ductwork fabrication goes next

A likely next step is more prefabrication, with ducts built in the shop as complete modules, with hangers, dampers and insulation fitted, then shipped to site ready to lift into place. That favours robots, because shop work is repeatable and safer than working on ladders. A cell with a robot welder, a sealant dispenser and a camera could turn the 3D model of a building straight into finished fittings, with robot programs generated and checked in RobotStudio before any steel is cut.

An orange ABB robot in Foundry finish holds a sheet at a Trumpf TrumaBend V230 press brake, 2005. Photo: Borowski / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Most houses use simple round duct, standard fittings and flexible duct, which is plastic over a coil of wire, and those parts already come off automatic machines. Better made and better sealed fittings leak less air, which matters for heat pumps and energy codes. Once ducts are installed, robots come back in another role: our post on air duct cleaning covers the crawler robots that inspect and clean them.

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

Variety is the hardest problem. Almost every building needs odd shapes, and a robot cell only pays off when shops can program new parts quickly. Thin galvanized steel distorts when welded and its zinc coating gives off fumes, so welding settings and fume extraction need care. Small shops may not have the money to run a robot cell, and they would need sheet metal workers who also understand robot programming. My guess is that most shops will end up mixed, with robots welding and sealing the repeat work while people make the fittings that do not fit any template.

Airmen at a waterjet cutter in a US Air Force sheet metal shop. Photo: U.S. Air Force via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com