How air fryers are made
An air fryer does not fry. It is a small convection oven that blasts air at up to 200 °C over lightly oiled food.
- stations
- 7
- things upstream
- 99
- raw sources
- 29
- steps from the ground
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The short version
Under its glossy shell, an air fryer is a compact convection oven. A tubular heating element sits just above the food, and a fan directly above that drives hot air down through a perforated basket. Factories stamp and coat the basket, build the element, mount the fan motor and controls, and close everything in a heat-resistant plastic housing.
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Stamp the basket and drawer
Steel or aluminized steel sheet is punched, perforated and drawn into the basket, the drip pan and the inner cooking chamber. The holes let hot air pass under and around the food.
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Spray on nonstick
Parts that touch food are sprayed with a PTFE nonstick coating, or a ceramic one on some models, then baked so the coating fuses to the metal.
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Make the heating element
A nichrome coil is centered in a stainless steel tube packed with magnesium oxide powder, and the tube is drawn through a die to compress that powder. The sealed rod is then bent into a flat spiral.
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Mount the fan
An electric motor with a metal fan blade is fixed in the lid above the element. The fan pushes air past the hot element and down onto the food at high speed, thinning the layer of cool air that clings to its surface.
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Mold the outer housing
Heat-resistant plastic is injection molded into the outer shell, the drawer front and the handle. An air gap and inner metal walls keep the outside cool enough to touch.
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Wire controls and safety
A control board with a timer, a thermostat sensor and a display is wired to the element and the motor, along with a thermal fuse and a switch that cuts power when the drawer is pulled out.
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Assemble and burn in
The chamber, lid and housing are screwed together and the drawer is fitted. Each unit is run hot on the line to check temperature, fan and cutoffs before packing.
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Worth repeating
- Deep frying browns food at about 140 to 165 °C, and an air fryer gets the same browning reactions with hot moving air instead of a bath of oil.
- Groupe SEB sold the first air fryer in France in 2006, four years before Philips launched its Airfryer brand.
- An estimated 60 percent of US households had an air fryer by 2023.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and air fryer starts as these 29 raw sources.
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Sources
- Convection oven (Air fryer)
- What materials and coatings are used in my Philips Airfryer?
- Heating element
- Convection oven
These sources say little about the factory steps themselves, so parts of this line are a general description. Treat the details with care, and tell us if you know better.
Cite this page: "How air fryers are made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/air-fryer