Rocket Manufacturing Robot: From Goddard to ABB

Rocket engines used to be built almost entirely by hand, one tube and one weld at a time. Today a growing share of an engine comes out of a metal 3D printer, and robots weld the tanks, print large parts and carry inspection gear around them. This post follows that shift from Robert Goddard's backyard rocket to printed combustion chambers. It asks where a rocket manufacturing robot fits in the factory, and which ABB arms and software could take on the welding, printing and finishing work, with a clear line between what has been done and what is still a possibility.

A Merlin engine for the Falcon 9 booster on the floor of the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, 2008. Photo: Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

From Goddard's frame to the F-1 tube wall

On 16 March 1926, in a field at Auburn, Massachusetts, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid fueled rocket. It burned liquid oxygen and gasoline, flew for about two and a half seconds and was built by Goddard and a small group of helpers. The photo of Goddard standing beside the launch frame shows how small the whole thing was. For decades after, rocket engines stayed close to that model: a small team of skilled machinists and welders making each engine as a nearly unique object, tested one at a time.

Robert Goddard beside the frame of his liquid oxygen and gasoline rocket, launched on 16 March 1926. Photo: Esther Goddard / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The Apollo program scaled that craft up. Rocketdyne built the F-1 engines for the Saturn V first stage in California, and each thrust chamber wall was made from hundreds of thin metal tubes that carried fuel to cool the chamber. Technicians shaped and fitted those tubes by hand before the assembly was brazed together in a furnace. Pumps, valves and the gas generator were machined and assembled by people working from paper drawings. Numerically controlled machine tools sped up the cutting of parts in the 1960s, but final assembly and inspection stayed manual.

A Rocketdyne F-1 engine, the type that powered the Saturn V first stage, at the Air Zoo museum. Photo: Varnav / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Big welding machines arrived first on the tanks, which are larger and simpler than engines. At NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, the Space Shuttle external tanks and later the Space Launch System core stage were welded with automated equipment. For SLS, NASA built the Vertical Assembly Center, a friction stir welding tower more than 50 meters tall that joins barrel sections and domes into complete tanks. Friction stir welding stirs the metal without melting it, which suits aluminum alloys that crack under normal arc welding.

A welder inside a friction stir welded liquid hydrogen tank for NASA's Space Launch System at Michoud, 2016. Photo: NASA/Michoud/Steve Seipel via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Printed chambers and robot cells today

Metal 3D printing changed engine work in the 2010s. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center hot fired a 3D printed rocket injector in 2013. SpaceX printed the combustion chamber of its SuperDraco abort engine in Inconel, and Rocket Lab's Electron flew on Rutherford engines with printed main parts from 2017. Relativity Space launched Terran 1 in March 2023 with most of its mass printed, although the second stage did not reach orbit. Printing turns dozens of brazed or welded parts into a few pieces, which cuts the hand assembly that made engines slow.

SpaceX SuperDraco engines, whose combustion chambers are 3D printed in Inconel, at the Hawthorne facility, 2014. Photo: SpaceX / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The latest example comes from Scotland. In September 2026 Skyrora finished hot fire testing a 3.5 kN engine with a titanium coated part made on its Skyprint 2 hybrid printer, and the company says switching from a nickel alloy to titanium cuts that part's weight by about 44 percent. X-ray checks before and after six firings found no damage. On 2 October it reported a 45 second static fire of a scaled down Skyrora XL at Machrihanish. Skyrora says Skyprint 2 makes engine parts up to 2.3 meters long, and that most of its 70 kN engine, including the combustion chambers, is printed in house.

A 3D printed rocket injector fires during a hot fire test at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, 2013. Photo: NASA/MSFC/David Olive via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Many large metal printers use a welding torch or laser on a moving arm, and industrial robots are a common way to carry that head. ABB's RobotStudio has a 3D Printing PowerPac, launched in 2020, that turns standard g-code into robot programs for processes such as wire arc printing. ABB arc welding robots such as the IRB 1520ID and IRB 2600ID run the hose package through the arm, which helps on curved parts. We found no public record of an ABB robot printing flight engine hardware, so treat these as tools that could fit. Our post on robotic laser welding covers the joining side.

An engineer runs a robot 3D print planned in ABB RobotStudio. Photo: ABB

What launch factories will automate next

Printed parts come out of the machine rough and need machining, polishing and inspection before they fly. That finishing is still mostly manual. Robots already grind castings in other industries; one example is an ABB IRB 6700 grinding steel parts in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer. A similar cell could remove support material and smooth flanges on printed rocket parts. Inspection is the bigger task. Skyrora used X-ray before and after firing, and robots that hold scanners or move parts through CT machines could make those checks faster and more repeatable.

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

Cost and qualification are the open problems. A launch company has to prove that every printed part matches the one that passed testing, so each change of printer, powder or robot program can mean new tests. Skyrora is working with the National Manufacturing Institute of Scotland to qualify Skyprint 2, its materials and its machining process. Robot cells help here because they repeat a path exactly, but the quality data has to be logged for every part. Engines also stay low volume. A factory might build dozens a year, far fewer than the cars a typical welding cell is designed for.

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

Rocket engines will not be built in homes, though some of the methods reach smaller shops. University rocket teams already 3D print parts and test small engines, and a welding cobot in a garage runs on the same kind of path programming as a factory printing cell. Launch factories will need people who can program arms, read X-ray and scan results and understand metallurgy. In July 2026 NASA technicians at Marshall were still trimming and welding the final panel of new SLS hardware, so the likely future is mixed crews of welders, inspectors and robot programmers. Readers who want to start on the programming side can begin with ABB robot use cases.

New SLS hardware on stands at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center after its final panel was welded, July 2026. Photo: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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