This year marks the 30th anniversary of Haas Automation’s first vertical machining center – the VF-1. The “V” represented the standard industry designation for a vertical mill, with company founder Gene Haas adding “F1” to unofficially designate it as the company’s “Very First One.”
Developed in 1987 and introduced at IMTS in Chicago in 1988, the Haas VF-1 established an industry milestone as the first American-built vertical machining center to sell for under $50,000. Factoring for inflation, that $49,900 starting price would be nearly $104,000 today. But 30 years later, the 2018 Haas VF-1 still sells for less than $50,000, coming in at a starting price $46,995.
To commemorate 30 years of the VF-1, Haas Automation has launched a year-long Very First campaign that will include worldwide demo day events, a video series documenting both Haas and customer "very firsts", and much more. The campaign will culminate with the return of machine No. 1 – the Very First Haas VF-1 – to IMTS 2018 in Chicago.
All of Haas’ products are manufactured in the company’s 1.1-million-square-foot facility in Southern California and distributed via a global network of more than 170 Haas Factory Outlets. Each HFO has showroom facilities, factory-trained service personnel, all-encompassing spare-parts inventories and fully stocked service vehicles.
The company currently estimates that about 200,000 Haas CNC machines and 100,000 Haas rotary products are in use around the world. In 2018, Haas Automation will build more than 15,000 machines, with 60 percent heading to international markets.
Image Credit: https://www.haascnc.com/machines/vertical-mills/vf-series/models/small/vf-1.html