Shock Absorber Manufacturing: ABB Robots and the IRB 1700

Shock absorber manufacturing looks like quiet work until you ask what a damper must survive: millions of strokes, heat, road grit and a steel tube welded into a car's suspension. This post follows the shock absorber from the friction discs of the 1920s through hydraulic and monotube designs to the welding and assembly cells of today. It ties the story to the ABB IRB 1700 family launched on 13 October 2026. ABB has announced no damper project, so the fit described here is a possibility.

The rear shock absorber of a Ducati Panigale motorcycle, a modern damper in the open. Photo: Andy Carter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

From friction discs to the monotube

Early car shock absorbers were friction dampers. Photos of a 1923 Aston Martin racing car on Wikimedia Commons show friction disc units of the André Hartford type, where plates rubbed together to slow the springs. They worked, but friction changes with wear and weather. Maurice Houdaille patented a hydraulic rotary vane design around 1907 to 1909, depending on the source. Reference accounts say Houdaille units became standard equipment on the Ford Model A in 1927.

A friction disc shock absorber on a 1923 Aston Martin racing car, shown in close-up in Morges, Switzerland. Photo: Akela NDE / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 FR)

In the United States the Houdaille name was carried by Houde Engineering of Buffalo, New York, whose former office building still stands. Hydraulic dampers then moved from rotary and lever arms to telescopic tubes. Monroe introduced its first hydraulic shock in 1926, and its Monro-Matic of 1951 is described as setting the standard for the telescopic shock still used today. That shape matters for factories, because a telescopic damper is mostly a long tube. A tube is easy to hold, rotate and weld, which is why mounting eyes, brackets and spring seats can be joined to it in simple fixtures. Lever-arm shocks were largely replaced by telescopic ones by the 1970s.

The former Houde Engineering Company office building in Buffalo, New York, 2021. Photo: Andre Carrotflower / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The next step was the monotube. Bilstein introduced the first monotube gas pressure shock absorber on a Mercedes-Benz in 1957, building on research by Bourcier de Carbon, according to the company's own history. A monotube has a single tube with a dividing piston and a gas charge behind it. For production this means tighter tolerances on one precision tube, careful filling with oil, and a gas charge sealed in. Every one of those steps is easier to repeat with a machine than by hand, especially the filling and sealing, where a small error in oil volume or gas pressure changes how the damper feels.

A cutaway demonstration model of an industrial shock absorber from Forkardt in Germany. Photo: R. Henrik Nilsson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Welding and assembling dampers today

A modern damper has a tube, a piston and valve stack, a rod, seals, an oil and gas charge, and mounting parts welded to the outer tube. In many designs those welds carry the weight of the car, so the joint has to match from the first part to the millionth. Repeat seams like this are where arc welding robots replaced hand torches decades ago. The tube sits in a positioner, the robot runs the seam, and an inspection step checks the part before it moves on to filling and assembly.

The parts of a disassembled shock absorber laid out and numbered, with the coil spring above. Photo: A7N8X / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB's news this month fits that picture. On 13 October 2026 ABB announced the IRB 1700 and IRB 1700ID, compact robots with five variants and payloads from 6 kg to 12 kg, running on the OmniCore controller. ABB claims up to 20 percent shorter cycle times, up to 15 percent lower power use than the IRB 1600, and up to 20,000 hours between oil changes. Path repeatability is down to 0.03 mm and joint speed reaches 700 degrees per second. ABB lists material handling, arc welding, deburring, sanding and machine tending among the tasks, and says the robot has a footprint 50 percent smaller than its predecessor.

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

The IRB 1700ID routes cables and hoses inside the arm, which suits a cell where a torch moves around a rotating tube. ABB showed the pair at CIIF in Shanghai from 12 to 16 October 2026, in an arc welding and sanding demonstration. ABB has not said the robots will build shock absorbers. They suit the work on paper: small steel parts, repeatable seams and a small footprint. A cell like this is usually designed and tested first in RobotStudio before any steel is cut.

An ABB IRB 1700 family robot working inside a glass demonstration cell at CIIF in Shanghai, October 2026. Photo: ABB

What comes next for dampers and the cells that build them

Damper makers sell many versions of one basic part, for different cars, loads and markets, so cells have to change over quickly. That is where ABB's newest software may help. OmniCore EyeMotion with AI Robot Trainer, announced in the same October week, targets changing products and lighting, and ABB claims up to 90 percent faster commissioning. Those are ABB's own numbers. In a damper plant the same idea could let a robot find tubes lying loose in a bin, though I found no ABB customer doing this yet.

ABB's AI vision stand at CIIF in Shanghai, October 2026, with an operator at the OmniCore EyeMotion and AI Robot Trainer screens. Photo: ABB

Homes feel this only through price. Nobody puts a welding cell in a garage, but dampers sit in cars, bikes and appliances, and cheaper cells can lower what they cost. Real obstacles remain for the factories that make them. Welding fume needs extraction, staff who load parts need guarding, and fixtures for each new damper add cost. Small suppliers often lack people who can program arcs and sensors, which is why easier programming matters as much as faster arms.

A late 1990s Weforma hydraulic industrial shock absorber cut open as a demonstration model in Stolberg, Germany. Photo: R. Henrik Nilsson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

My expectation is modest: robots will keep taking the repetitive welds and handling steps, while people keep setup, inspection and the odd jobs that do not repeat, such as a prototype damper for a new car. Electric cars add weight, and that may push damper designs and their welds harder, but I found no source that puts numbers on it. Other welded products made the same move from hand work to robot cells, and the post on exhaust systems shows how that went.

An ABB IRB 1700 in a demonstration cell on ABB's stand at CIIF in Shanghai, October 2026. Photo: ABB

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