Pump Manufacturing: From Archimedes to ABB Robots

Pump manufacturing turns out some of the most common machines on earth, from circulators that move hot water through a radiator to big centrifugal pumps that feed city water mains. Each one needs a casing, an impeller, a shaft, seals and usually a motor, machined and assembled to tight fits and then tested under pressure. This post goes from the Archimedes screw and the first steam pumps to the pump factories of the twentieth century, then looks at the robot cells that now handle casings and impellers, and at where ABB robots fit.

Inline centrifugal pumps with their electric motors in a building plant room. Photo: Saud / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From water screws and steam to the centrifugal pump

People lifted water with simple machines long before anyone built a factory for them. The water screw, a helical blade turning inside a cylinder, is traditionally credited to Archimedes of Syracuse, although some historians think he found Egyptians already using it. The earliest mention dates from between 250 and 220 BC, and remains of water screws have been found across the Roman Empire, although the device largely fell out of use in Europe in the third century AD before coming back in the Renaissance. Each screw was cut and fitted by hand, often in wood. Screw pumps are still used today, mostly in wastewater treatment plants and to drain low lying land.

Archimedes screw pumps at the Wadebridge sewage works in Cornwall, 2012. Photo: David Hawgood / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

On 2 July 1698 the English engineer Thomas Savery patented a steam powered pump for raising water. It was the first commercially used steam device, and it helped drain mines. The centrifugal pump, which now dominates industry, took longer to mature. A mud lifting machine drawn by Francesco di Giorgio Martini around 1475 is sometimes called the first. Denis Papin built a true centrifugal pump with straight vanes in the late seventeenth century, and the British inventor John Appold introduced the curved vane in 1851.

A steam pumping engine preserved at the Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London. Photo: Chris Allen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Mass production arrived in the twentieth century, with foundries casting iron and bronze housings and machine shops turning shafts and impellers. Grundfos, now the largest pump maker in the world, started in 1945 in Poul Due Jensen's cellar in Bjerringbro, Denmark, under the name Bjerringbro Pressestøberi og Maskinfabrik, a die casting and machine factory. It adopted an Archimedes screw as its logo in 1955 and today makes more than 16 million pump units a year. At that volume, casting, machining and assembly have to run on automated lines.

Women assembling stirrup pumps by hand at a factory in England, 1941. Photo: Ministry of Information Photo Division, Imperial War Museums via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How robots machine, weld and test pump parts

Most of the work in a pump plant is handling metal parts between machines. A casing comes from the foundry, goes into a machining centre, then to deburring, washing, leak testing and assembly. Robots load and unload the machines and carry parts between stations, the job described in our post on CNC machine tending. For bigger pumps, robot arms weld fabricated steel casings and baseplates, and grind cast impellers, where every vane needs the same smooth profile so the pump runs quietly and efficiently.

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

On 13 October 2026 ABB Robotics launched the IRB 1700 and IRB 1700ID, five variants with payloads from 6 to 12 kg, controlled by OmniCore. ABB lists material handling, arc welding, deburring, sanding and machine tending as target tasks, with path repeatability down to 0.03 mm and up to 20% shorter cycle times than comparable robots. Compared with the IRB 1600 it follows, ABB quotes up to 15% lower power use, a footprint half the size and up to 20,000 hours between oil changes. The ID version routes cables and hoses inside the arm, which helps when a robot reaches into a machine tool to swap pump housings.

An ABB IRB 1700ID with a welding torch and wire feeder at its public debut at CIIF in Shanghai, October 2026. Photo: ABB

For heavier parts, an IRB 6700 can grind and handle castings, as it does in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer, and a GoFa CRB 15000 cobot can work beside people at assembly benches fitting seals and screws. These are possibilities for pump makers, since ABB has not announced a specific pump plant project in the sources we found. Grinding and welding paths are usually planned and checked offline in RobotStudio before the cell is built. Our post on valve manufacturing covers a closely related industry.

An ABB IRB 6700 grinding a steel part in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer. Photo: ABB

Where pump factories are heading

On 14 October 2026 Pumps Africa reported that Uganda's National Water and Sewerage Corporation had asked Grundfos to explore local pump assembly and spare parts manufacturing with National Enterprise Corporation. Managing Director Silver Mugisha raised it at the IWA World Water Congress in Glasgow, held from 4 to 8 October, because imported spare parts can delay repairs. NWSC also sees locally made components serving water utilities elsewhere in East Africa. A new assembly plant like that would start with manual work, and small robot cells could follow as volumes grow.

A Warman centrifugal slurry pump in service at an industrial site. Photo: Bernard S. Janse / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)

Established factories have a different problem. Pumps for heating, water supply and industry come in thousands of sizes, so plants need cells that switch between casings quickly. Vision systems and automatic path planning, which ABB lists as part of the IRB 1700 software, are meant to cut the time it takes to set up a new part. For homeowners the result shows up in quieter, more efficient circulator and well pumps, since precise machining of impellers and seals affects both noise and energy use.

Grundfos heating circulator pumps installed in a home boiler, 2017. Photo: The RedBurn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Castings vary from piece to piece, so a robot grinding an impeller needs sensors or force control to follow the real surface. Small batches make it hard to justify a dedicated cell, and pressure testing still needs careful safety design around high pressure water. Plants also need people who can program and maintain the robots and who know how a pump is supposed to perform. Local plants such as the one proposed in Uganda would need that training from the start, as the Pumps Africa report points out.

Axial, mixed flow and centrifugal pump impellers on a display board, showing how vane shapes differ. Photo: Meisam / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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