In 1988, Haas started production on a fully enclosed CNC machining center priced well below the competition. In 1986, Haas and a partner were awarded a US patent for their invention. His first commercial product, the HBI-5C (Haas Brothers Indexer), sold well because it was programmable and inexpensive.

After seeing the positive reaction of attendees, he decided to form Haas Automation to mass-produce them. In March 1983, he displayed his indexer at WESTEC (an industry expo). He built one for himself and a few more for other machine shops. Haas thought that building his own indexer with a stepper motor drive would be more efficient. In 1980, Haas noticed that it took one of his employees a long time to manually position an indexer. In 1978, he opened Pro-turn Engineering, a small machine shop with two employees. So, for the next few years he worked as a machinist and CNC programmer. After graduation he was unable to find employment that paid more than what he was earning at his summer machine shop job. He originally majored in engineering but switched to business after Lockheed nearly went bankrupt. Haas graduated from California State University, Northridge in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting and finance.

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