Microwave Oven Manufacturing: ABB Robots on the Line

Microwave oven manufacturing starts with a strange fact: the oven began as a radar part. Percy Spencer noticed in 1945 that a radar set had melted a candy bar in his pocket, and within about two decades the idea had become a kitchen appliance. Today the same product is built in large volumes, with sheet metal cavities, high voltage parts, sensors and a door that must seal properly. This post follows the oven from the 1947 Radarange to current assembly lines, uses a recent Hackaday story about the popcorn button as a way into today's ovens, and shows where ABB robots could fit.

An Amana Radarange countertop microwave oven, the brand Raytheon made famous. Photo: TaurusEmerald / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From a radar tube to the Radarange

Spencer worked at Raytheon, where he ran the power tube division. The division grew from 15 to more than 1,000 people, and his production changes raised magnetron output from 100 to 2,600 tubes a day. The magnetron is the part that still makes microwaves in every oven today. Raytheon filed a patent application for a microwave cooking oven on 8 October 1945. The tube in the photograph is a Raytheon 725A pulse magnetron from the Second World War, a cousin of what ended up in kitchens. Spencer also tried popcorn kernels under a magnetron, which his Wikipedia biography calls the first microwaved popcorn.

A Raytheon 725A magnetron pulse tube from the Second World War, in a museum case. Photo: Daderot / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Raytheon showed two Radarange units to the press on 7 October 1946, and the 1947 model was the first commercial microwave oven. It stood almost 1.8 metres tall, weighed 340 kilograms, drew 3 kilowatts and was water cooled. Raytheon leased it to hotels and restaurants. That is a machine for a commercial kitchen, not a home. A Raytheon Radarange also sits aboard the NS Savannah, now a museum ship in Baltimore.

A Raytheon Radarange microwave oven aboard the NS Savannah in Baltimore, photographed in 2012. Photo: Acroterion / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The home market opened slowly. Tappan showed a consumer microwave oven in New York in October 1955, advertised at $1,250. Raytheon bought Amana in 1965, and in 1967 Amana launched the first affordable countertop Radarange at $495. By 1972 Litton was selling two models at $349 and $399. About 1 percent of US households owned a microwave in 1971, a quarter did in 1986, and more than 90 percent did by 1997. That growth is what turned hand fitting into a production line problem.

An Amana Radarange with a touch keypad, from the generation after the 1967 countertop model. Photo: jmv / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Today's ovens and the robots that could build them

A modern microwave oven is cheaper to make and more complicated than the Radarange looked. The cavity is formed sheet metal, and the door has to contain the microwaves. Behind the panel sit a magnetron, a transformer and a control board. As of 2020, Midea Group made the majority of countertop microwaves sold in the US, according to Wikipedia, which shows how much of the world's supply comes from a small number of very large factories.

A microwave oven with its door open on a shop shelf, showing the metal cavity. Photo: MichalPL / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Hackaday's 10 October 2026 piece on why every oven has a Popcorn button while every bag warns against it shows how much sits behind a simple key. The setting can be a plain timer on one oven and a sensor that listens for popping or reads humidity on another, so a factory builds the same button around different hardware. A factory that builds both has to wire and test each version. That is where flexible automation helps most, because a line that can change variants quickly is worth more than a line that does one job fast.

The display and control panel beside the open door of a microwave oven. Photo: Easysayg / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB has not published a microwave oven line, so this is a possibility and not a customer story. It does have close relatives. At Electrolux in Curitiba, Brazil, an ABB GoFa cobot works at a gas leak and electrical test station on a refrigerator line, and a test of that kind suits an oven's final check of the door switch, display and heating. At Electrolux's Dudley Park plant in Australia, a 2018 report described six ABB robots picking and packing ovens, including two IRB 6700 and two IRB 2600 arms that place side panels and fit them to each oven.

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

Welding is the other obvious fit. A cavity and its outer shell are sheet metal parts that a fixture can hold while a robot joins them, as the ABB arm in the photograph does with a large part on a positioner. A compact IRB 1300 could load parts into presses or welders, and the program can be built and checked offline in RobotStudio before anyone stops the line. These are suggestions based on what the robots do, and a microwave maker would size the cell from its own cycle times.

An orange ABB welding robot working on a large part held in a positioner. Photo: Ana 2016 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Where microwave ovens are heading next

At the end of the line, boxed ovens are heavy and awkward, and palletizing is old work for robots. An ABB IRB 660 or IRB 460 can stack boxed products on a pallet at the end of a line, and those palletizers are widely used for boxed goods. Palletizing does not depend on the oven's design, which makes it the easiest first step for a plant that wants to add robots. Our guide to ABB robot use cases lists other jobs of the same kind.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizing robot stacking boxed products at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

Ovens keep adding functions. ArchDaily showed a combi microwave oven in a gallery on 16 October 2026, one more sign that a single box now does several jobs, and each job adds parts to assemble and test. For small parts such as wiring and light assemblies, a dual arm YuMi like the one working at Electrolux's refrigerator line could take work from people. Cost, skills and safety are the open problems. A small plant must pay for tooling and find people who can program cells, and a robot beside a worker needs safeguards like those in ABB's SafeMove software.

A dual arm YuMi working at a refrigerator line at Electrolux in Curitiba, Brazil. Photo: ABB

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