Washing Machine Manufacturing: ABB Robots Build the Drum

A washing machine looks simple from the outside, but washing machine manufacturing has to join sheet metal, a perforated drum, a water tub, a motor and a shaft seal into something that survives years of spinning. This post follows the machine from the washboard to the first electric drum washers, then to the robot lines Miele built in Gütersloh with ABB arms, and on to the Haier plant that was reported this month. It ends with what could change next in factories and at home, and with the problems that are still open.

Looking into the drum of a Whirlpool AWM 875 front loader, a perforated drum inside a sealed tub. Photo: MichalPL / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From washboard to wringer and drum: how washers got built

For most of history, washing meant a tub, a washboard and hard scrubbing, and a 1941 photograph from Greene County, Georgia shows exactly that scene. Factories came into the story once someone put a motor on the tub. Electric washers were being advertised in newspapers as early as 1904, and the Nineteen Hundred Washing Machine Company of Binghamton, New York, says it built one in 1906. Nobody can say for certain who was first, and historians still argue about it, but the direction was clear: the work of washing moved out of the yard and into a machine.

A woman scrubs laundry on a washboard in a tub, Greene County, Georgia, 1941. Photo: Jack Delano / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The Thor, made by the Hurley company of Chicago and designed by its engineer Alva J. Fisher, was developed in 1907 and sold across the United States from 1908. Its patent, issued on 9 August 1910, describes a perforated cylinder turning inside the tub, with blades that lift the clothes and a reversal after eight turns so the load does not clump. A Westinghouse motor drove it through belts and wheels. It is widely called the first electric washer sold commercially in the US, and that claim is disputed. The idea of a drum inside a tub has stayed with the product ever since.

A metal drum washing machine from the 1920s or 1930s, made by GEM. Photo: Helsinki City Museum / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Maytag started in 1893 as a farm implement maker and has built wringer washers since 1909. It made about 12 million of them before stopping on 22 November 1983. A wringer washer still needed a person to feed every garment through the rollers. The big change came with Bendix, which introduced the first domestic automatic washing machine in 1937, a design close to today's front loaders. General Electric followed with a top loading automatic in 1947, and Maytag built its first automatic washers in 1949 in a new dedicated factory. After that, a washer was a motor, drum, tub and controls to assemble by the million.

A 1940s Maytag wringer washer at the Benzie Area Historical Museum. Photo: MSwierenga / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Miele, Haier and the robot lines behind today's washers

The best documented ABB washing machine line is Miele's plant in Gütersloh, Germany. For its W1 generation, Miele built two new lines, one for housings and one for the drum and tub units. ABB's case study lists IRB 6640, IRB 2600, IRB 140 and IRB 6620LX robots across them. On the housing line, gantry mounted IRB 6620LX robots join base, side walls and brackets by clinching, which presses the sheet metal together with no filler or screws. The cycle time is 49.5 seconds per housing. The figures come from ABB's 2016 case study and a 2017 trade report, so check Miele for the current setup.

An ABB robot with a gripper lifts a washing machine housing part on Miele's line in Gütersloh. Photo: ABB

Behind the housings sits the unit pre-assembly line. It is 65 metres long, sized for one million units a year, and uses 21 ABB robots to screw, join and handle the bearing cross, inner drum, tub, motor and shaft seal. The tolerances are tight. The gap between drum and tub may vary by only a few tenths of a millimetre, which keeps water and air moving correctly and stops the machine from eating socks. An IRB 140 weighs a shaft seal, greases it and weighs it again to prove the grease went on, while an IRB 6640 sets the tub against its cap and clamping ring.

Inside an open top loading washing machine, the drum sits within the outer tub. Photo: W.carter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Washers are still a growth business. Reports from 18 and 19 October say Haier India plans to invest ₹7,000 crore in a plant at Satyavedu in Andhra Pradesh that would include washing machines, with a first phase of ₹4,500 crore running by 2028. The reports rely on unnamed sources, and none names a robot supplier. If such a plant bought ABB, gantry robots like the IRB 6620LX could tend machines and IRB 2600 arms could dispense adhesive, as at Miele. That is a possibility, not an announced order. Teams usually build and test a cell like this first in RobotStudio.

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

What comes next for washer lines and laundry at home

End of line testing looks like the next job for cobots. At Electrolux's refrigerator plant in Curitiba, Brazil, ABB's YuMi took over gas leak testing and a GoFa CRB 15000 took over electrical testing, and ABB reported productivity up by more than 68 percent. Our post on ABB cobots on appliance lines covers that plant. A washer has its own checks for filling, spinning, draining and leaks, so a similar cell could fit. I found no ABB washing machine test case, so treat that as an idea.

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

At home, the washer itself changes slowly. Shops still sell rows of drum machines, like the aisle photographed in a Japanese electronics store in 2025, and nothing yet loads and folds the laundry for you. The hard part is the cloth, because limp fabric is difficult for a gripper to pick up. Robohub wrote on 12 October that the real test for humanoid robots is doing the laundry. Our post on laundry and cloth handling covers what ABB's side of that problem looks like today.

Rows of drum washing machines in a Japanese electronics store, 2025. Photo: Tokyo538 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The open problems are mostly ordinary. Factories want lines that switch between drum sizes and washer models without retooling, and Miele asked for exactly that when it specified its pre-assembly line. Cobots at test stations work next to people, while the gantry cells at Miele sit behind fences, so each layout needs its own safety design. Programming and simulation skills decide how fast a new model gets on the line. Cost also matters, since a robot is only one part of a cell that also needs grippers, fixtures and integration work.

An engineer programs a robot cell on a laptop next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

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