ABB Robots and the Right to Repair Home Robots

For most of the last century, broken electronics went to a repair shop. Radios and TVs often came with circuit diagrams, and a technician with a soldering iron could swap a tube or a capacitor and send the set home. The military trained its own radio repairmen to fix sets in the field.

A US Army radio repairman running a maintenance check in 1966. Photo: SFC Peter F. Ruplenas, US Army / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Then devices got sealed. Glued batteries, proprietary screws and parts sold only to authorized shops made many gadgets cheaper to replace than fix. Repair cafés and teardown sites like iFixit grew up partly in response, teaching people to open what manufacturers had closed.

Volunteers fixing household items at a Repair Café. Photo: Ilvy Njiokiktjien / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

On September 1, Texas's electronics right-to-repair law took effect. Makers of consumer electronics wholesaling above $50 now have to give owners and independent shops the same parts, tools and manuals their authorized repairers get. It passed 130-0 and 31-0, and it excludes large industrial equipment.

An iFixit electronics repair toolkit. Photo: PantheraLeo1359531 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Industrial robots have long worked on a repair-first model, because a robot is expected to run for decades. ABB says its remanufacturing program has refurbished more than 12,000 robots, reusing 60 to 80 percent of each one, with a functional test of at least 16 hours and a 12-month warranty.

Early ASEA and ABB industrial robots on display. Photo: Dependability / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB reports 98 percent spare-parts availability from regional hubs, and it retrofits old cells. At Gerresheimer's glass plant in Essen, a swap of seven robot systems secured spare parts for the next decade. Its service agreements can also cover preventive maintenance with flat fees for spares and labor.

Two people looking closely at an ABB robot at work. Photo: ABB

Home robots will be consumer electronics, so laws like Texas's will likely cover them. I'd like them built the industrial way, with replaceable joints, published manuals and parts on sale for years, because a household robot that can't be fixed will end up as very expensive e-waste.

An engineer wearing an AR headset beside an ABB GoFa cobot. Photo: ABB

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com