Valve Manufacturing: Foundries to ABB Robot Cells

Pipelines, power plants and water networks all run on valves, and valve manufacturing still combines heavy castings with precise machining and pressure testing. This post starts with bronze stopcocks in Roman water pipes and follows the trade through the brass and iron foundries of 19th and 20th century America. It then looks at the present, when valve makers such as AMPO and Uniflow Controls are opening new plants, and at the jobs where ABB robots fit, mainly machine tending and handling parts for assembly and testing. The last part covers what comes next, including automated leak testing and the shortage of skilled people on the shop floor.

A 60 inch gate valve made by the Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Company of Troy, New York, once used by Denver Water, on display in 2015. Photo: Jeffrey Beall / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

From Roman stopcocks to American valve foundries

Roman plumbers already fitted bronze plug valves to their lead water pipes. A tapered plug turned inside a cast body to open or close the flow, and examples survive in museum collections. For centuries afterwards, valves stayed small and were made one at a time by founders and metalworkers. Steam changed the scale. Boilers and engines, along with city water and gas systems, needed valves that held pressure, and a valve that leaked or stuck could stop a mill or cause an explosion. Makers moved toward standard designs and much larger production runs.

A Roman bronze plug valve, with the tapered plug that turned to stop the water. Photo: Le plombier du désert / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Crane is one of the best documented cases. Richard Teller Crane and his brother Charles started R. T. Crane & Bro. in Chicago in 1855, selling brass goods and plumbing supplies. After it was incorporated in 1865 as the Northwestern Manufacturing Company, it made a full line of industrial valves and fittings in cast iron, malleable iron and brass, and by 1870 it employed about 160 people. The work in plants like this was heavy and manual. Core makers formed sand cores by hand, molders poured iron and bronze, and machinists bored and threaded each casting on belt driven lathes.

A core worker at Stockham Pipe and Fittings in Birmingham, Alabama, shows the core box and cores for a brass gate valve body, around 1950. Photo: Library of Congress HAER via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Automation came in pieces. Foundries added core blowers, molding machines and conveyors, as historic photos of Stockham Pipe and Fittings in Birmingham, Alabama, collected in a 1990s survey of the plant, show. In 1952 MIT demonstrated a numerically controlled milling machine, and numerical control, later computer numerical control (CNC), gradually took over the machining of valve bodies, bonnets and stems. The first industrial robot, the Unimate, went to work at a General Motors plant in 1961 handling hot die castings. Robots reached valve plants later, mostly to load machines, grind castings and move heavy parts.

The brass foundry machine room at Stockham, where cast bronze valve bodies were machined for assembly. Photo: Jet Lowe, Library of Congress HAER via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Valve plants, CNC lines and robot cells today

Several valve makers are adding capacity right now. In September 2026 the Spanish group AMPO opened AMPO KAZAKHSTAN in Atyrau, a workshop of about 2,600 square metres with machining, assembly and testing for ball, gate, globe, check and control valves, plus a training centre for local staff. In India, Uniflow Controls is putting about ₹50 crore into an Industry 4.0 plant at Ambernath, Maharashtra. It expects yearly output to grow from about 8,000 valves to between 40,000 and 50,000, with a focus on severe service valves for high pressure and cryogenic duty.

A machinist works at a Tsugami CNC lathe, the kind of machine that turns valve bodies and stems. Photo: Whoisjohngalt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In plants like these, a valve body usually goes through CNC turning and milling centres, where its seats and threads are cut, and then on to assembly and pressure testing, often to standards such as API 598. Machine tending is the most common robot job. At DAU Componentes in Spain, ABB IRB 6620LX robots running on an overhead rail tend CNC machines, and the same layout would work for valve bodies. A heavier arm such as the IRB 6700 can lift large castings, while the compact IRB 1300 suits small bodies, stems and bonnets in tight cells.

ABB IRB 6620LX robots on an overhead rail tending CNC machines at DAU Componentes, Spain. Photo: ABB

Smaller valve shops often start with a cobot. The GoFa CRB 15000 can load parts into a lathe without a full safety fence, and ABB's Wizard easy programming lets a machinist set up a job on the FlexPendant without writing code, as described in control robots with no code. Robots can also deburr and grind castings, paint finished valves and stack them for shipping. ABB has not announced robot projects with AMPO or Uniflow, so for valve makers like these such cells remain an option to weigh.

An ABB GoFa cobot loading parts into a machine at a small factory. Photo: ABB

Where robotic valve manufacturing goes next

Testing is the obvious next job to automate. Every valve has to be pressure tested, and a large body clamped into a test bench can weigh more than a person can safely lift. A robot could load the valve, connect the test fixtures, read the result from the test controller and sort passes from failures, which would take over one of the most tiring jobs in the plant. Engineers normally plan and check cells like this in RobotStudio first, so they can confirm reach and cycle time and look for collisions before any hardware arrives.

Bored and assembled gate valves hang in the paint booth at Stockham's valve assembly building. Photo: Jet Lowe, Library of Congress HAER via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Assembly is harder. Valves come in many sizes and pressure classes, often in small batches, and fitting seals, packing and stems takes a sensitive touch. Force controlled robots and cobots can help with screwing and pressing steps, and two armed robots such as YuMi already assemble small parts in other industries. For most valve makers, though, the economics depend on batch size. A plant making thousands of identical ball valves can justify a cell much sooner than a workshop that builds custom severe service valves one order at a time.

An ABB IRB 1300 small industrial robot with an operator holding the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

People may be the tightest constraint. Uniflow expects to employ more than 175 people at Ambernath, and AMPO built a training centre into its new site. Robots can take over loading, lifting and repetitive finishing, but someone still has to program them, maintain the CNC machines and decide what to do about a failed seat test. Over the next few years valve plants will probably add robots step by step, starting with machine tending and testing, and leave the fitting of a valve that seals under pressure to skilled machinists and fitters.

Gate and globe valves for the pulp and paper industry stacked for shipping in Stockham's warehouse. Photo: Jet Lowe, Library of Congress HAER via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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