Syringe Manufacturing: From Glass Barrels to ABB Robots

Syringe manufacturing has gone from boiled glass barrels to billions of sterile plastic units a year. This post traces that change: how the first hypodermic syringes were made and cleaned, how the disposable plastic syringe took over, and how a modern line assembles and inspects each unit. It uses this month's news from BD's Connecticut plant as the hook, then looks at where ABB robots such as the IRB 1300 Clean Room, the IRB 360 FlexPicker and the IRB 1200 fit, and what is still hard.

A 19th century hypodermic syringe set with needles and a case. Photo: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

From glass barrels to the first plastic syringes

The hypodermic syringe dates to 1853, when Charles Pravaz in Lyon and Alexander Wood in Edinburgh each built one. Pravaz's was all silver and pushed fluid with a screw. Wood's barrel was glass with a plunger, so a nurse or doctor could see how much liquid it held and how fast it moved. Wood is usually credited with the first clinical use, injecting morphine under the skin that year. Both were made one at a time by instrument makers, and both had to be taken apart and cleaned after every patient.

An early Pravaz syringe and its hollow needles, shown in an old print. Photo: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Reusable glass and metal syringes stayed in hospitals for a long time. Staff boiled them, sharpened and reused the needles, and matched plungers to barrels by hand, because ground glass parts fitted only their own partner. Cleaning was never perfect, and reuse could pass disease from one patient to the next. That risk, and the labour of sterilising syringes all day, made a cheap throwaway syringe attractive. It needed a material that could be moulded in huge numbers, and that meant plastic.

Reusable glass and metal syringes in a wooden case. Photo: Maksym Kozlenko / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

New Zealander Colin Murdoch patented a plastic disposable syringe design in 1956, and health officials at first rejected it because they doubted that people would accept a plastic injection. BD built a plant in Canaan, Connecticut, that opened in 1961 with eight employees in a 25,000 square foot building, making about 10 million syringes a year. BD says Canaan is where the first fully sterile, single-use plastic syringe was made. Moulded barrels and plungers could be produced by machine, which turned a medical instrument into a mass-produced product.

A disposable plastic syringe with a graduated barrel and plunger. Photo: Nadina Wiórkiewicz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How robots join the syringe line today

BD marked 65 years in Canaan on 6 October 2026. The same plant now makes more than 2 billion syringes a year with more than 500 employees in a 385,000 square foot site, according to BD's own anniversary statement. The same day, news reports said BD had committed 19 billion dollars to US investment, with about 3 billion earmarked for manufacturing growth. At those volumes a syringe line runs almost without stopping, and machines make, assemble, check and pack the parts.

A modern single-use plastic Luer-Lok syringe from BD. Photo: Mx. Granger / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

A typical plastic syringe has a barrel, a plunger rod, a rubber stopper and often a needle and cap, so a line has many small parts to place. Moulding machines produce the parts, and assembly machines combine them in a fixed sequence. Robots tend to appear at the edges of that sequence: lifting parts out of moulds, feeding trays to assembly stations, placing finished units into cartons, and handling samples for inspection. Vision cameras typically check for cracks, missing parts and flaws in the plastic. For prefilled glass syringes the stakes are higher, because the contents are a drug and the surrounding space is a clean room.

An industrial robot and a technician in a clean room at BBS Automation in Blaichach, Germany. Photo: Clemenspool / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB's catalogue maps onto those edges. The IRB 1300 Clean Room version is a small six axis arm made for controlled environments, and its photo shows it loading small parts in an assembly station. The IRB 360 FlexPicker, a delta robot, picks small items from a moving conveyor at high speed, which suits sorting and packing. No source says ABB robots run in BD's plant, so these are possible fits. A team would plan such a cell in RobotStudio and test cycle times before building anything.

An ABB IRB 1300 Clean Room robot handling parts at an assembly station. Photo: ABB

What comes next for syringe lines

The biggest change is the shift from empty syringes to prefilled ones. Biologic drugs and many vaccines now ship in prefillable glass or polymer syringes, and a market report published on 18 October 2026 links growth in prefillable glass syringes to biologics and aseptic fill capacity. Vetter, a contract manufacturer, won a Red Dot Award on 16 October for a new syringe closure. Prefilled units need gentler handling and cleaner surroundings than a throwaway plastic syringe, which pushes more work toward clean room robots.

A prefillable glass syringe with a tip cap, made by Schott Pharma. Photo: Schott Pharma / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For factories, the open problems are cost, validation and change. A pharmaceutical line must show regulators that every step is controlled, so a robot cell has to be documented as carefully as the product. Product changes are frequent, because syringes come in many sizes and fittings, and a robot that is quick to reprogram saves downtime. ABB's IRB 1200 is a compact arm often used for small parts, and the Wizard easy programming tool could help staff adjust a pick and place routine without writing code. Skills remain a gap, since few engineers know both robotics and pharma rules.

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, a compact six axis arm for small part work. Photo: ABB

Homes see syringes mainly through pens, autoinjectors and vaccines. Those products start life on lines much like these, so the same factory robots shape what patients use at home. A parent giving a vaccine or a patient using a pen is holding the end product of a line like this one. Related posts cover autoinjector and pen assembly and medical device assembly. The likely next step is more automation around the syringe, with better inspection, fewer people near open product and faster changeovers. Cost is the main brake, since a clean room cell is far more expensive than a standard one.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items at high speed. Photo: ABB

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