Robotic Plasma Cutting: ABB Arms From Torch to Bevel

Robotic plasma cutting puts a torch that shoots a jet of superheated, ionized gas on the end of a robot arm, so it can cut holes, bevels and profiles in pipe, beams and formed parts that a flat cutting table cannot reach. This post goes from the oxy-fuel torches that shipyards and steel mills used for most of the twentieth century to the plasma arc invented at Union Carbide in the 1950s. Then it looks at a Louisiana pipe shop in 2026, at the plasma cobot package ABB now sells with RobWelding, and at what still holds robot plasma cutting back, from fumes and worn nozzles to the cost of programming.

A Hypertherm HyPerformance plasma torch cutting steel plate. Photo: Hypertherm via Wikimedia Commons (free use)

From oxy-fuel flames to Robert Gage's plasma arc

Before plasma, steel was cut with a flame. In 1903 the French engineers Edmond Fouché and Charles Picard developed oxy-acetylene welding, and the same gases were soon used to cut steel. The cutter heats the metal to its kindling temperature, then opens a jet of pure oxygen that combines with the iron and turns it into molten iron oxide, which the jet blows out of the cut. The method is cheap and needs no electricity, so demolition and scrap crews still use it. It works by burning iron, though, so it is a tool for ferrous metals, and the torch still had to be guided by a steady hand.

A worker on a lift cuts up an old footbridge with an oxy-acetylene torch in 2009. Photo: Misaso / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The plasma arc came out of a welding lab. Around 1954 Robert Gage, a young scientist at the Linde Division of Union Carbide in Tonawanda, New York, found that forcing a gas tungsten arc through a small orifice made it much hotter and more intense, a bit like focusing light through a lens. His arc torch was patented in the United States on 10 September 1957 as patent 2,806,124. A plasma arc melts metal electrically and blows it away instead of burning it, so it cuts any conductive metal. Plasma cutting grew out of plasma welding in the 1960s and became a productive way to cut sheet and plate in the 1980s.

A plasma torch on a CNC gantry cutting steel plate. Photo: Devaes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Machines took over the steering next. Computer numerical control came to plasma cutting tables in the late 1980s and the 1990s, and later heads learned to tilt so they could cut bevels of 30 to 45 degrees for weld preparation while following an ordinary flat path. Robot arms went after the parts a table cannot hold: pipe ends, formed panels and three-dimensional weldments. At FABTECH 2012, ABB showed IRB 1600, IRB 2600 and IRB 4400 robots, one dressed in Hypertherm plasma cutting equipment and one in Thermadyne plasma equipment, beside a third robot carrying a TAFA plasma spray system.

A Motoman robot doing plasma cutting on a steel sheet in 2008. Photo: Robotworx / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Pipe cutters and plasma cobots in 2026

Pipe cutting is busy this year. On 23 September 2026 The Fabricator reported on Sealevel Construction in Thibodaux, Louisiana, which builds the helical piles, long steel pipes screwed into soft ground, that hold up energy supply and power distribution stations. Its two older HGG plasma machines had been running 24 hours a day since December, and at the end of July the shop added a third, a PC900-RB with a Hypertherm MAXPRO 200 torch that cuts material up to 1.5 inches thick and pipe up to 36 inches in diameter. That torch cuts at angles up to 45 degrees, and many parts go to the weld table with little or no cleanup.

A Retro Systems CNC machine cutting 12 inch pipe with a Hypertherm HPR400XD plasma power supply. Photo: Steve Brown Photography / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Those angled cuts are the reason to move the torch in more than two axes. A straight cut leaves a square edge, while thick plate or pipe that will be welded needs a sloped edge so the weld can fill the joint. Gantry tables cut bevels with tilting heads on flat plate. Robots take the parts that are curved or already formed, where the torch has to follow the surface in three dimensions and hold the same distance from it all the way round. Waterjet cells face the same geometry, which we covered in our post on robotic waterjet cutting.

A plasma bevel head cutting 1 inch steel plate on a Retro Systems CNC table. Photo: Steve Brown Photography / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB's newest plasma product is aimed at small shops. In March 2026 ABB Robotics published a video announcing what it called a first: fully integrated plasma cutting with a cobot, sold through the Dutch welding robot integrator RobWelding. ABB says it developed software with Hypertherm Associates so the robot and the plasma power source connect plug-and-play, and that operators need no programming experience. In the video a GoFa cobot cuts a steel pipe clamped on a welding table. Bigger parts go to ABB's industrial arms. The IRB 2600 carries up to 20 kg with a reach of up to 1.85 m, and ABB lists laser and waterjet cutting among the uses of the IRB 4600.

ABB's GoFa cobot on a welding table, the same arm ABB and RobWelding now offer for plasma cutting. Photo: ABB

Where robotic plasma cutting goes next

In factories, more plasma torches will probably end up on arms as fabricators try to keep up with demand without enough skilled cutters. A cobot makes the first step cheaper: a small shop could move one cobot between a welding job and a cutting job and teach its paths by hand, the way ABB's no-code programming tools are meant to work. Larger cells will keep using industrial robots for beams, pipe spools and heavy weldments, with paths generated offline from CAD models in RobotStudio, so the robot keeps cutting while the next program is prepared.

An engineer programs a robot cell in RobotStudio next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

The arc throws sparks, fumes and ultraviolet light, so cells need fume extraction and screens, and a cobot with a plasma torch still needs a risk assessment, because the torch is dangerous however gently the arm moves. Consumables wear out: electrodes and nozzles erode with every pierce, and cut quality drifts as they do. Accuracy is the other limit. A six-axis arm is less stiff than a gantry, so a robot needs calibration and a good model of the part to put holes and bevels where the drawing says.

A multi torch plasma cutter making bridge parts for the Broadway bridge in Boston, January 2020. Photo: MassDOT via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Outside factories, plasma cutting is already common in a smaller form. Handheld plasma cutters are standard tools in farm and garage workshops, and small CNC plasma tables are popular with sign makers and hobbyists, who learn the same basics of torch height, speed and pierce delay that a robot programmer sets. A robot arm in a home garage is still rare. The more likely path is the one cobots followed in welding, with lighter arms, simpler teaching and packages sold through local integrators, which is what ABB and RobWelding are now trying with plasma.

Teaching a GoFa cobot by hand with ABB's Easy Teach Device on the torch. Photo: ABB

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