Stainless Steel Sink Manufacturing: ABB Robot Cells

Stainless steel sink manufacturing looks simple from the outside: a flat sheet goes in and a bowl comes out. In practice it joins deep drawing, welding, grinding and polishing, and each step leaves marks that the next one has to remove. This post follows the sink from the zinc lined trough of the 1800s to the stainless bowl in most kitchens, looks at the newest sink launches of autumn 2026, and asks where ABB robots, from press tending arms to cobot welders, fit into the finishing cell.

A stainless steel sink bowl with its strainer. Photo: Fructibus / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From zinc troughs to the first stainless sinks

In the late 18th century the washstand held a pitcher and a deep bowl, and some stands had a hole for the bowl, which led to dry sinks. From about 1820 to 1900 the dry sink became a wooden cabinet with a trough on top, lined with zinc or lead. Zinc and lead gave the wood a waterproof surface, but they were soft metals, and the sink was still a piece of furniture. The move to a pressed steel bowl, set into the counter, came with the stainless steels of the early 20th century.

Dishes piled beside a sink with a tap above it, Netherlands, 1933. Photo: Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons (no known restrictions)

Stainless steel came from several labs. In 1912 the Krupp engineers Benno Strauss and Eduard Maurer patented Nirosta, an austenitic grade later known as 18/8 or AISI 304. In 1913 Harry Brearley, working at the Brown-Firth laboratory in Sheffield, found a corrosion resistant alloy while looking for something better for gun barrels. Franke, founded in 1911 by Hermann Franke as a plumbing company in Rorschach, Switzerland, made sinks from galvanized copper in the mid 1920s, and in 1934 moved to Aarburg and made its first stainless steel sink.

A plaque in Sheffield with a portrait of Harry Brearley, who found a stainless steel alloy there in 1913. Photo: David Morris / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Between 1935 and 1939, Franke says, a new welding technique allowed welded stainless sinks without visible joins and larger scale production. Elkay dates its first stainless sink to 1935 and says it became the first mass producer in the United States within three years. Blanco, founded in 1925, made stainless the focus of its production in 1951. Most stainless sinks today are formed by drawing a steel sheet over a die, and very deep ones are welded. Stainless resists rust and heat, but it tends to be noisier than other materials.

Two hydraulic presses of the kind used to form sheet metal parts. Photo: Sam D. Wilbur / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Presses, welds and the new sink launches

The recent news comes from the design side. At Küchenmeile 2026, BLANCO showed its new VION sink collection and Velgranit, a new sink material in four colours, as part of what its design head Marcel Moritz called a system of sink, tap and waste separation. Franke launched a DrainMax sink on 1 October 2026, and its product pages describe a 7 inch waste outlet and noise reduction technology. Both stories show where sink makers compete now: quiet operation, large drains, colours and finishes, on top of the steel itself. Franke's DrainMax product pages also say the sink cannot be used with a food waste disposer, a reminder that every feature has a trade off.

A custom double bowl stainless steel sink set into a stone counter. Photo: Havensmetal / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Deep drawing is the heart of the job. A punch pushes a sheet metal blank into a die, and the metal flows inward from the flange. A drawing counts as deep when the depth exceeds the diameter, which is reached by redrawing the part through a series of dies. Wrinkling and uneven thinning are the main defects, and severe drawing can work harden the metal so that annealing is needed. After drawing come trimming, welding of the deepest bowls and finishing, and the stainless brushed look is made at the end by graining. Press lines use robot arms to move panels between presses.

ABB robots moving panels between presses on a stamping line. Photo: ABB

Finishing has been automated for some time. PushCorp has shown robotic polishing of stainless steel sinks with force control and servo spindles to give a uniform grain. Metalac Inko, a Serbian maker of composite sinks and bathtubs, uses a FANUC six axis robot in a grinding and polishing cell and says output multiplied. For ABB, an IRB 6700 grinds steel parts in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer, ABB arms tend press lines, and arc welding robots turn heavy parts on positioners. I found no source naming ABB in a sink plant, so each of these is a possibility. Our post on grinding and deburring goes deeper.

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

Quieter sinks and cells that switch models

A sink plant has to make many sizes. Custom makers such as Havens build stainless sinks to order, and a kitchen planner may ask for a single bowl, a double bowl or a farmhouse front. That variety makes a fixed welding jig expensive, and it is why a cobot is attractive. ABB's GoFa cobot with its arc welding package can be taught a weld by moving the torch by hand, which suits small batches. See cobot welding for job shops for how that works.

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

Stainless sink makers face a hard comparison with composite sinks. In late September 2026, a Trend Hunter piece described NAITRON's process for cutting variation in wholesale granite composite sink runs, a reminder that rivals compete on consistency as well as looks. A robot gives steel the same advantage: every bowl gets the same grain, corner radius and weld bead. A cell would first be built and checked in RobotStudio, where the program is simulated before any steel is cut.

ABB's GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package on a welding table. Photo: ABB

For homes, the sink is not changing as fast as the machines behind it. People will keep asking for deep bowls, quiet drains and finishes that hide scratches. The open problems are noise, the cost of tooling for each model and the skill needed to set up grinding and polishing cells. Robots will help most with heavy handling and with repetitive finishing. Our dishwashing post looks at the other side of the sink, where a cobot might do the washing up.

A woman in her kitchen in Seattle in 1939, with the counter and sink behind her. Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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