Vinyl Record Pressing: From Berliner to ABB Robots

Vinyl record pressing still looks a lot like it did in the 1960s. An operator stands at a heated hydraulic press, loads a lump of hot PVC, closes the press and lifts out a record. Demand came back after decades of decline, and pressing plants now run old machines next to new automated ones. This post covers how records were made from Emile Berliner's first discs to the long-playing record, what automated presses changed, and where industrial robots such as ABB's IRB 1200, IRB 360 FlexPicker and GoFa cobot could take over the handling and packing.

Workers operate an SMT record press at Quality Record Pressings. Photo: David Clouston / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

From Berliner's shellac discs to the microgroove LP

The flat disc record came from Emile Berliner, a German-born inventor working in the United States. He sold the first commercial disc records in the 1880s, and by 1894 his United States Gramophone Company was selling single-sided 7-inch discs meant to play at "about 70 rpm". Unlike Edison's cylinder, a disc could be stamped from a master, so a factory could turn one recording into many copies. In 1901 Berliner's and Eldridge Johnson's companies were reorganised into the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey.

Emile Berliner with an early disc gramophone, photographed between 1910 and 1929. Photo: National Photo Company / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Early records were pressed from shellac compounds, mostly by hand. Photographs of the Berliner Gramophone Company's Montreal factory from 1910 show rows of workers at small presses, with finished discs piled on the benches beside them. Shellac had real limits. To keep the grooves from collapsing, makers could fit only about 80 to 100 grooves per inch, so a 78 held just a few minutes of music per side. Vinyl later allowed up to 260 grooves per inch.

Workers inside the Berliner Gramophone Company factory in Montreal, 1910. Photo: McCord Museum via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Columbia Records unveiled the long-playing record at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on 21 June 1948. It was a 10 or 12-inch vinyl disc that turned at 33 1/3 rpm and used microgrooves. The way records were made then stayed the same for decades. A lacquer master was electroplated to make metal "mothers", the mothers produced nickel stampers, and the stampers went into hydraulic presses. A 1944 photograph from RCA Victor's Montreal plant shows a worker at a press with the discs in front of him, and every press in a plant like that had its own operator.

An RCA Victor employee pressing discs at the company's Montreal plant, 1944. Photo: Conrad Poirier / BAnQ via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How pressing plants work today

Vinyl came close to disappearing when CDs took over, and many plants closed. As of 2017 there were 48 pressing facilities worldwide, and by 2021 they were making around 180 million LPs a year. Several plants made news this September. The owners of United Record Pressing in Nashville turned down outside offers and started their own building project. In an interview the same month, Saji Pillai described how his company Samanvii commissioned India's first new vinyl plant in nearly four decades in 2024.

The United Record Pressing building in Nashville. Photo: Brooksdawson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The presses are where most of the change has happened. Many plants still run refurbished machines from the twentieth century, such as the SMT presses at Quality Record Pressings. In 2016 Hand Drawn Pressing in Addison, Texas, opened what is described as the world's first fully automated pressing plant, using WarmTone presses from Viryl Technologies in Toronto. Refurbished machines average about two records a minute and the WarmTone about three. Pheenix Alpha, meanwhile, now builds a new manual press based on the AD12, which it calls the world's most popular vinyl press.

A record press mould from 1978, with the round die that holds the stamper. Photo: geni / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Robots are more likely to work beside the press than inside it. After a record comes out it has to be cooled, trimmed, inspected and packed, the same steps the Samanvii interview lists. ABB has not announced a vinyl project, though it already does this kind of work in plastics: in one Spanish plant an ABB IRB 4400 unloads parts from an ENGEL injection moulding machine. A compact IRB 1200 could lift finished discs off a press and stack them, and an IRB 360 FlexPicker could handle sleeved singles on a packing line. We found no pressing plant using either yet.

An ABB IRB 4400 unloads parts from an ENGEL injection moulding machine in a Spanish plant. Photo: ABB

Where vinyl record pressing goes next

Pressing plants are small factories, and new equipment is expensive. A WarmTone press has been reported at 195,000 dollars per machine, so automating the dull tasks around the press first makes sense. A GoFa CRB 15000 cobot can work next to an operator without a fence and stops when it senses contact. It could take records off a press while a person keeps an eye on quality. Engineers would normally build and test such a cell in RobotStudio first, checking reach and cycle time before any hot vinyl is involved.

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

Some problems are specific to records. They are soft and hot when they leave the mould, and a gripper that marks the surface ruins the disc. Premium pressings bring their own trouble: in September Headphonesty reported that pressing plants were warning labels to avoid one type of premium vinyl that collectors pay extra for. Inspection still needs people. A robot can sort out records that a camera flags, but somebody has to decide what counts as a defect. For more on robots and music, see our post on musical instrument manufacturing.

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, launched in 2025, a compact arm for machine tending and small part handling. Photo: ABB

Home listeners will mostly not notice the change, except perhaps as shorter waits. For plants the path will probably be gradual: automated presses where the budget allows, then robot cells for unloading, stacking and packing, with people kept for setup, stampers and quality checks. Runs are often small, and Pillai advises new artists to start with 100 to 300 copies. A cell that switches jobs that often is better served by easy programming tools like ABB's Wizard than by long custom projects. The ABB robot use cases page shows similar handling and packing cells in other industries.

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

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