Haas Automation, Inc started in 1983 by its founder Gene Haas. Eugene “Gene” Francis Haas (born November 12, 1952) is the founder, president, and sole stockholder of Haas Automation, a CNC machine tool manufacturer. The company also has a presence in motorsports, having founded NASCAR team Haas CNC Racing (now known as Stewart-Haas Racing) and the Formula One team, Haas F1 Team. In March 1983, he displayed his indexer at WESTEC (an industry expo). After seeing the positive reaction of attendees, he decided to form Haas Automation to mass-produce them. His first commercial product, the HBI-5C (Haas Brothers Indexer), sold well because it was programmable and inexpensive. The company entered the machine tool industry with the first fully automatic, programmable collet indexer – a device used to position parts for machining with very high accuracy. Over the next few years, the company expanded its product line to include fully programmable rotary tables, rotary indexers, and machine tool accessories.
Haas Automation serves worldwide with its products such as CNC vertical machining centers, CNC horizontal machining centers, CNC rotary products, and indexers 5-axis machining centers Mold making machining centers, Gantry routers, and Toolroom machines. Although Haas started with limited local distribution in Southern California, the company eventually expanded into U.S., Canadian and British markets. Its first overseas markets were Denmark, Holland, and Israel, and in 1993, Haas entered a partnership with Swiss machine tool builder Mikron, providing additional distribution to the European market.
In 1983, the company prided itself on customer service and this includes 90-day monitoring of newly installed equipment and distributor reports which notify the company of customer issues in a timely fashion. Once, Gene Haas, the founder was a customer himself. He ran a small job shop himself and instilled all of his strategies with the knowledge. In 1987, Haas Automation began developing its first vertical machining center (VMC), a machine designed to perform such machining operations as milling, drilling, tapping, and boring. The company manufactures Horizontal Machining Centers (HMC), which employs a spindle that is parallel to the ground floor; it also allows for two-pallet changer integration to facilitate unattended operation and reduce part cycle times. Turning Centers (CNC Lathes) A CNC Turning Lathe is a Computer-Controlled piece of machinery. It allows basic machining operations such as turning and drilling to be carried out as on a conventional lathe. They are designed to use modern carbide tooling and fully use modern processes. Employing the latest equipment and procedures for close-tolerance manufacturing the first VF-1 prototypes were completed in 1988 and introduced at the International Machine Tool Show (IMTS 88) in Chicago, Illinois.
By 1997, Haas had shipped its 10,000th CNC machine, making it the largest unit-volume machine tool manufacturer in America. By 2006, Haas Automation had exceeded $700 million in sales, and in 2007 the company installed its 75,000th machine. Haas also moved the same year to its current purpose-built, 1 million-plus square foot facilities in Oxnard, California. Haas distributes worldwide through its network of Haas Factory Outlets. Still one of the largest machine tool manufacturers in the world, Haas produces a variety of machining systems, including CNC lathes, CNC vertical machining centers, CNC horizontal machining centers, rotary tables, and indexers. The first outlet was established in 1999 located in Torrance, California, and applied to the company’s existing worldwide network and then expanded to Europe. Products are distributed worldwide through a network of independently owned franchised local “factory outlet” businesses that provide sales, service, and application support for Haas machine tools.
Today, Haas manufactures four major product lines. All Haas products are manufactured at the company’s expansive facility in Oxnard, California – the largest, most modern machine tool manufacturing operation in the United States. If you’re interested in buying a Haas Machine, please look through our inventory of used Haas machines or contact us today and we’ll guarantee that we can help you find the right machine that’s perfect for your application.