Wiper Blade Manufacturing: From Anderson to ABB Robots

Wiper blade manufacturing looks simple from the driver's seat: a strip of rubber on a spring frame. Behind it sits a long line of extruded rubber, vulcanizing ovens, coatings, cutting and small assembly work, and every car with a windscreen depends on one. This post follows the wiper blade from Mary Anderson's 1903 patent to the production lines of today, using a few recent news items from the aftermarket. It then looks at where ABB robots such as the IRB 360 FlexPicker, IRB 1200 and IRB 2600 could fit on those lines.

A person holding a windscreen wiper in a snowy driveway. Photo: ShiberuInupreza / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

From a hand lever to a mass-produced blade

Mary Anderson filed her patent for a window cleaning device on June 18, 1903, and it was issued on November 10 of that year as US 743,801. Her wiper was worked by hand from inside the vehicle. One account says the idea came from watching a streetcar driver struggle with sleet in New York, and that companies she approached saw no practical value in it and feared a moving arm would distract drivers. The invention was not an immediate success, but the patent drawing already shows a hand lever, a swinging arm and a rubber blade pressed against the glass, the same basic parts later wipers used.

Mary Anderson's window cleaning device, from her 1903 patent drawing. Photo: Mary Anderson via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Cars made the wiper a necessity, and early windscreens were small, upright and often split in two. In 1917 John R. Oishei formed the Tri-Continental Corporation, which sold the Rain Rubber, described today as the first mass produced commercial windshield wiper blade. Folberth and his brother Fred applied in 1919 for a patent on an automatic wiper, granted in 1921. Trico later settled a patent dispute with Folberth and bought Folberth's Cleveland company, the Folberth Auto Specialty Co. The blade was now a standard part, and that meant standard tooling and a production line.

A 1930 Ford Model A, photographed at a classic car rally in Lisbon in 2010. Photo: Pedro Ribeiro Simoes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Trico's former Plant No. 1 still stands in Buffalo, New York, a reminder that wipers were once a big industrial product of their own. The rubber part itself is made by extrusion, and patents describe extruding two rubber compounds at once into a strip shaped like two blades joined along their lips. The strip is vulcanized and then cut down the middle to give two blades. The lip is thin, generally 0.5 to 1.0 millimetres, which makes the extrusion step demanding. A strip that thin has to come out of the die at the same shape along its whole length, because that edge is the part that touches the glass.

The former Trico Plant No. 1 in Buffalo, New York, photographed in 2009. Photo: Pubdog / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

One trade article describes a wiper blade extrusion line as commonly about 130 metres long, with sections for extrusion, vulcanization, bromation, coating and finishing, which covers brushing, printing and slitting. Assembly is the part that has resisted full automation. A patent on wiper arms notes that assemblies with many separate parts do not suit complete automation. Still, a Chinese patent describes an automatic system for ribbed blades in which a mechanical arm picks small strips from a belt and places them on a positioning plate on a conveying rail.

A worker holds rubber tubing as it is extruded, in a 1949 Navy test report photo. Photo: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Today's blades and where ABB robots fit

The aftermarket has been busy. On September 29, 2026, Premium Guard Inc. (PGI) announced a relaunch of the TRICO brand, with TRICO ICE due in November 2026 and Exact Fit, FORCE and FLEX lines in January 2027. PGI says it is focusing on rubber compounds, wiping edges and coatings. Around the same time, Rain-X launched a web app that uses a phone camera to identify a wiper arm and guide installation. Both items show that the work now is as much about materials and fit as about the frame.

The tip of a used windshield wiper blade, showing its rubber edge. Photo: Jacek Ruzyczka / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

No ABB wiper plant project is documented in the sources used here, so what follows is a possibility, not a reference. At the packing end, an IRB 360 FlexPicker could pick finished blades from a conveyor and place them into blister packs or cartons at speed, as these delta robots do with small items on other lines. A compact IRB 1200 could tend a cutting or ultrasonic welding station. An IRB 2600 can carry and place larger parts, such as frames or full cartons, in a production cell.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots picking items on a moving line. Photo: ABB

Quality is where today's robots add something the old lines lacked. ABB's 3D Quality Inspection cell scans a metal part with a robot and compares it with its design, which suits metal parts such as spring frames and rails. Rubber lips need different checks, such as camera inspection of the wiping edge. Those would be added by system builders, and ABB's role would be the robot arm and its controller, not the lip inspection itself.

ABB's 3D Quality Inspection (3DQI) cell scanning a metal part. Photo: ABB

What comes next for wiper blades

Blades are moving to more models and more materials, and the news from PGI shows how. TRICO's coming Silicone Ceramic line is positioned as its technology flagship, and PGI plans adapter systems for a growing range of wiper arm designs. A wider range means shorter runs, and short runs reward flexible robot cells over fixed machines. Our post on the windshield installation robot shows the other end of the same glass, where robots fit the windscreen that wipers then clean.

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, a compact arm for machine tending and small parts. Photo: ABB

Programs for a new blade variant can be tested in RobotStudio before the cell is built, which helps when a plant changes blade models often, since a robot path can be checked on screen before anyone touches a machine. The open problems are cost and skills. Wiper blades are cheap, so a robot has to pay back against low wage assembly, and few plants have people who can program vision and grippers for thin rubber lips. For homes, nothing here needs a robot, apart from the apps that already help owners swap a blade by hand.

An engineer programs a robot cell in RobotStudio next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

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