A new Haas VF-2 lists at $70,995, and that number is 35% of what the machine will cost a one-shift job shop over ten years. The other 65% is maintenance, one spindle, power, coolant, cutting tools, and the vises and holders that the list price does not include. We built the bill line by line from Haas’s published list, Haas Tooling’s catalog, Hymson’s maintenance benchmarks, EIA’s industrial tariff and IRS Publication 946, and we opened 63 used listings to see what a five-year-old machine actually asks. This piece covers the sticker and what it excludes, the used market that hides its prices, maintenance and the spindle, power and tooling, the utilization curve, the Section 179 cash position, and behind the wall the configuration that wins, five checks before buying used, and what the Open Factory Bid-Tab Price Book can and cannot yet say about machine tools.
Source: Open Factory Bid-Tab Price Book, machine-tool worked example (compiled from Haas list price via MachineToolIndex, Hymson maintenance benchmarks, Haas Tooling, EIA Table 5.6.A; as of Sep 2026)
Read left to right: $70,995 of machine, ~$10,000 of rigging and startup tooling, $19,524 of preventive maintenance, $16,000 of spindle and ball screw, $11,004 of electricity, $15,000 of coolant and lube, $60,000 of cutting tools, a gross outlay of $202,523, and a net of $172,523 after a $30,000 resale in year ten. The low and high cases in the CSV run $122,590 to $266,981 net.
The Sticker Is a Third of the Bill
Every line in the waterfall has a source or an (A) for assumption, and the CSV under the chart carries both. The sourced lines are the list price (Haas via MachineToolIndex, verified 31 Aug 2026), preventive maintenance at 2.0 to 3.5% of replacement value a year, an integral spindle rebuild at $8,000 to $25,000, a ball screw regrind at $2,500 to $5,000 per axis from the same table, electricity at the EIA industrial rate of 9.17 cents per kWh in June 2026, and the vises and holders priced from Haas Tooling in September 2026. The assumptions are freight, rigging and install ($6,000), coolant and lube ($1,500 a year), consumable cutting tools ($6,000 a year), a 6 kW average draw, and a $30,000 resale.
The base case puts the ten-year net cost at $172,523, or 2.4 times the sticker, before anyone is paid to stand in front of the machine. Operator labour is excluded on purpose: it dwarfs every line here and it is a shop decision, not a machine decision. Floor space, insurance and a CAM seat are excluded for the same reason. What is left is the cost of owning and feeding one VF-2, which is the number a buyer should compare against a used machine, an SS, or a competitor’s quote through Quote Check.
The two lines that move the total most are the ones with an (A). Cutting tools at $6,000 a year are 30% of the gross outlay, and a shop cutting titanium will spend double while a shop cutting 6061 spends half. Resale at $30,000 is anchored on one data point we could verify, a 2008 VF-2 that KD Machinery marked sold at $22,750, and on Machinio’s asking band for 2016 to 2022 machines, which we return to below. The Equipment Price Benchmark exists to replace both assumptions with contributed numbers.
What $70,995 Buys and What It Does Not
The list price buys the standard machine: 30 by 16 by 20 inch travels, a 22.4 kW (30 hp) 8,100 rpm 40-taper spindle, a 20-pocket carousel changer at 4.2 seconds tool to tool, 1,000 ipm rapids, a 3,539 kg machine holding 208 litres of coolant, and a service requirement of 220 VAC three-phase at 70 A or 440 VAC at 35 A. The same page carries the sentence that matters: “Options, tooling, freight and installation are extra.” Haas is one of the very few builders that publishes list prices at all, which is why it scores where it does on the OEM Disclosure Scorecard, and why this article can exist for a VF-2 and not for a Mazak.
Source: Haas Automation list prices as published on machinetoolindex.com, Aug 2026
The ladder reads $70,995 for the VF-2, $78,995 for the VF-2YT with 20 inches of Y, $83,995 for the VF-2SS with a 12,000 rpm inline spindle and a 30+1 side-mount changer, and $87,995 for the VF-3. The SS premium of $13,000 is 18% of the base machine and is the one option Haas prices as a model rather than a line item.
Probing, through-spindle coolant, a chip conveyor and 4th-axis wiring are not in the $70,995, and Haas’s Build and Price tool sits behind a bot check we could not read in this pass. So the waterfall carries the standard machine and states the options gap rather than inventing it. The used listings we opened show what shops actually order: six of the ten Premier Equipment machines were SS models with 12,000 rpm spindles, three of the Surplus Record machines listed a WIPS or Renishaw probe, and one 2021 machine at Resell CNC had a spindle probe, through-spindle coolant and a programmable coolant nozzle. A configured machine, not the base one, is what resells.
Freight and rigging are the second unpriced line. Hymson’s rate card gives $150 to $225 an hour for distributor service labour and $1.50 to $2.00 a mile for travel, and a VF-2 install is a day for two technicians plus a rigger and a truck. We carry $6,000 and mark it (A). The RFQ template for capital equipment asks the distributor to break freight, rigging, install and training into four lines, and the answer is usually between $4,000 and $8,000 for a machine this size, a spread Quote Check flags when a distributor folds it into one line.
Machine Tool Prices Are Up 30% Since 2016
We wanted to chart the VF-2’s list price year by year from archived Haas price lists. The Internet Archive was offline for the whole of our research window, so the history we can show is the industry’s, not the model’s. The BLS producer price index for machine tool manufacturing tells the shape.
Source: BLS PPI PCU333517333517 via FRED, Jul 2026
The index sat at 109.3 in January 2016 and 116.4 in January 2021, a 6.5% rise in five years, then climbed to 142.6 by July 2026, a further 22.5% in five and a half. Scaled by that ratio, today’s $70,995 machine would have carried a list price near $54,400 in 2016 and $57,900 in early 2021, and the CSV under the chart carries the implied series with the arithmetic labelled as ours.
A VF-2 bought in 2021 and sold today has lost less to depreciation than list inflation has added, which is why used asking prices sit so close to new. The mechanism is the same one we described in Japan Is Eating the US Capex Boom: builders raised prices into a demand wave, and the first half of 2026 was the strongest half-year for US machine tool orders since 1998 at $3.44 billion, with 11,243 units and an average order near $306k that we unpacked in The $306k Machine. Haas builds the VF-2 in Oxnard, California, so the Tariff Exposure Calculator returns zero Section 232 exposure on the machine itself; the September 2026 tariff schedule still matters for the Taiwanese vises and Japanese carbide that go on it.
The Used Market Hides Its Prices
A buyer who wants to know what a 2018 VF-2 is worth can find dozens for sale and almost no prices. We opened every VF-2 family listing we could reach on 10 September 2026 and counted.
Source: Open Factory Bid-Tab Price Book, machine-tool worked example (compiled from Surplus Record, KD Machinery, Premier Equipment, Resell CNC listings; as of Sep 2026)
Surplus Record showed 51 VF-2 family listings, nine dealers in the 32 rows we captured, and 3 of them carried a price: a 1994 machine at $5,950, the 2008 machine sold at $22,750, and a 2011 parts machine at $3,069. KD Machinery listed 20, every one “Call for Price”. Premier Equipment listed 10 with dates from May to September 2026 and no prices. Resell CNC showed a 2021 VF-2SS behind “Please login to see price”. Machinio and eBay blocked automated access outright. The 63 rows we captured are in the CSV under the chart.
Premier’s ten listings are the only ones with dates, and they show how fast the good machines move. A 2022 VF-2SS posted on 9 June 2026 and a 2023 VF-2SS with a rotary table posted on 21 May 2026 were both marked sold by the time we opened the page in September; the 2016 standard machines posted on 10 August and 2 September were still for sale, as were a 2010 SS and a 2014 VF-2 with the older 20 hp spindle. Late-model SS machines clear in weeks at a price nobody publishes, while base machines from 2014 to 2016 sit. That pattern is the resale argument for buying the configured machine in the first place, and it is why our resale assumption is $30,000 for a standard VF-2 and not the $41,900 floor of Machinio’s band.
Source: Open Factory Bid-Tab Price Book
Of the 63 machines, 31 were model year 2015 or newer and 12 were 2020 or newer, including a 2025 VF-2SS at KD Machinery and a 2023 VF-2SS with a rotary table that Premier marked sold in May 2026. The supply is young because shops trade up to an SS or a UMC and because the machines hold value; the machines hold value because the used channel keeps the clearing price private.
The only public asking-price series we found is Machinio’s model page, and it put 2016 to 2022 machines at $41,900 to $62,900 when we read it on 9 September 2026, 59% to 89% of new list. The page blocked our attempt to re-open it the next day, so the bands below are as read once, and marked as such.
Source: Machinio, Haas VF-2 model page, Sep 2026
The three bands read $8,900 to $12,500 for 1994 to 2008 machines, $34,500 to $39,950 for 2010 to 2015, and $41,900 to $62,900 for 2016 to 2022, against the $70,995 reference line. Asking is not sold, and the two priced Surplus Record machines from 2008 and 1994 came in at $22,750 sold and $5,950 asked, both outside the Machinio band for their years. Building the Missing Index lays out how we intend to turn realized auction hammers into a monthly series; until it exists, the Equipment Price Benchmark contribution form is the only place a buyer can put the price they actually paid.
Maintenance: 2 to 3.5% a Year Plus One Spindle
Preventive maintenance is the most predictable line and the one most shops skip. Hymson’s benchmark table, updated 24 June 2026, puts a standard 3-axis VMC at 2.0 to 3.5% of new replacement value a year, which is $1,420 to $2,485 for a VF-2, and a comprehensive PM contract for a single machining center at $1,500 to $4,000 a year in In-House CNC’s July 2026 cost guide. The two sources agree, and our base case takes 2.75%, or $1,952 a year and $19,524 over ten.
Source: Hymson, CNC Maintenance Cost Benchmarks, Jun 2026
The VF-2 sits at the bottom of the table: 2.0 to 3.5% for a 3-axis VMC, 2.5 to 4.0% for a 2-axis lathe, 4.0 to 7.0% for a 5-axis or mill-turn, and 5.0 to 8.0% for grinders. A UMC-500 costing $120,000 at 5.5% costs $6,600 a year to maintain against the VF-2’s $1,952, which is a $46,000 gap over ten years before anyone counts the crashes.
The spindle is the one component that turns a maintenance budget into a capital event, at $8,000 to $25,000 for an integral spindle and an expected interval of 8,000 to 15,000 spindle hours. At 2,000 hours a year that is one rebuild between year four and year eight, and at three shifts it is two. In-House CNC’s numbers are lower, $1,500 to $4,000 for a rebuild of common assemblies and $5,000 to $15,000 for a new high-speed spindle, so our $12,000 sits between the two sources. We asked the spindle shops for a price and got none: GTI Spindle publishes a 10 to 20 business day turnaround and a one-year warranty, Gilman Precision publishes a repair evaluation form, PDS publishes a 24-month warranty, and not one publishes a dollar figure. Haas sells the cartridge through its parts store, which sits behind the same bot check as the price list.
Ball screws are the other wear item. Hymson prices a regrind at $2,500 to $5,000 per axis and a new OEM screw at $4,000 to $9,000, and we carry one regrind over ten years at $4,000. A shop that crashes the machine twice a year will replace a screw instead, and a shop that never crashes it will not touch them. The Factory Automation Roadmap tracks the probing and tool-breakage-detection options that cut the crash rate, which is the best maintenance spend on the list.
Power, Coolant and Cutting Tools
Electricity is the line buyers worry about and should not. The VF-2 draws a 26.7 kVA service at 220 V and 70 A, but the spindle is rated 22.4 kW and runs nowhere near it on average; we assume a 6 kW mean draw over spindle hours, mark it (A), and multiply by the EIA industrial rate of 9.17 cents per kWh in June 2026. One shift is 12,000 kWh and $1,100 a year at the US average, $790 in Texas at 6.58 cents, and $2,489 in California at 20.74 cents.
Source: EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, Aug 2026
The US industrial rate ran 6.76 cents in 2016, 6.67 in 2020, 8.62 in 2025 and 8.89 year to date in 2026, a 31% rise that adds $260 a year to a one-shift VF-2. Ten years of power at the US average is $11,004, 5% of the gross outlay; in California it is $24,888 and still only 11%. The shops that should care are three-shift shops in PJM states, where the same table shows Ohio at 9.89 cents and rising.
Cutting tools and workholding are the lines the sticker hides best, and they are 32% of the ten-year gross outlay in our base case. Startup is sourced: Haas Tooling lists the Essential Mill Workholding Kit with a 6 inch manual vise at $999.95 and a second 6 inch fixed-jaw vise at $589.95, a CT40 ER32 collet chuck at $79.95, and CT40 end mill holders at $80.95 to $92.95, all list, all read on 10 September 2026 with IMTS sale prices 5 to 25% under. Twenty holders, two vises, collets and knobs come to roughly $4,000 before a single end mill. Consumable carbide at $6,000 a year is our assumption and the widest range in the model, $4,000 for aluminum job work to $10,000 and beyond for steel and titanium.
Coolant, way lube and filters at $1,500 a year are the last (A). A 55 gallon sump refilled twice a year with a 5% emulsion, a drum of way oil, and mist filters land in that range for a one-shift shop; a shop that lets the sump go rancid will spend more on disposal than on concentrate. The 50-SKU MRO basket covers what those consumables cost at Grainger, McMaster and Amazon Business, and the spread between the three is wider than the spread between coolant brands.
Utilization Decides the Hourly Rate
A machine cost is a rate, not a total, and the rate depends on hours. We split the base case into fixed costs (capital less resale, 60% of PM, the ball screw) and variable costs (40% of PM, a spindle rebuild every 12,000 hours, power at 6 kW, coolant at $0.75 an hour, cutting tools at $3.00 an hour) and ran it at four utilizations.
Source: Open Factory Bid-Tab Price Book, machine-tool worked example
At 1,000 spindle hours a year the VF-2 costs $12.36 an hour all-in and $9.36 for ownership alone; at 2,000 hours it is $9.03 and $6.03; at 4,000 hours $7.36 and $4.36; at 6,000 hours $6.80 and $3.80. Going from one shift to two cuts the hourly cost 19%, and the ownership component falls 28%, because $51,000 of capital and $16,000 of fixed maintenance are spread over twice the hours. Past two shifts the curve flattens: cutting tools are $3.00 of every hour regardless, and the second spindle rebuild arrives in year five instead of year ten.
Two things the chart does not show. Resale falls with hours, and a 6,000-hour-a-year machine at year ten has 60,000 spindle hours on it against 20,000 for the base case, so the $30,000 residual is optimistic there and the three-shift bar is a floor, not an estimate. And the spindle line is linear in the model but lumpy in life: Hymson’s 8,000 to 15,000 hour interval puts a three-shift shop’s first rebuild in year two, when the machine is still under a payment plan, which is the cash event to budget for rather than the average.
The number a job shop should carry into a quote is the ownership rate, $4 to $6 an hour at one to two shifts, plus its own tooling and labour. The $75 to $95 an hour that job shops typically quote for 3-axis time (a rule of thumb, not a survey) is not recovering machine cost; it is recovering a machinist, overhead and margin, and the machine is a rounding error at two shifts. That is also why an under-utilized VF-2 is the most expensive machine in the building, and why the used-refurbished market is full of machines that ran 800 hours a year.
Section 179 Beats Any Discount
The 2026 Section 179 limit is $2,560,000 with the phase-out starting at $4,090,000, per IRS Publication 946, and the same publication restores the 100% special depreciation allowance for property acquired and placed in service after 19 January 2025. A VF-2 is 2.8% of the limit. A shop buying one, or ten, expenses the whole price in the year the machine is placed in service, and the year-one tax saving is 21% of $70,995 for a C corporation and up to 37% for a pass-through owner in the top bracket.
Source: Open Factory Bid-Tab Price Book, machine-tool worked example (compiled from IRS Publication 946, FRED DPRIME, 26 USC 1 and 11; as of Sep 2026)
A cash buyer at 21% is out $56,086 net in year one; at 37% the figure is $44,727. A buyer who finances 100% over 60 months at 8.75% (the prime rate of 6.75% on 2 September 2026 plus 2 points, our assumption) pays $1,465 a month, $17,582 in year one, and deducts the full $70,995 plus $5,745 of interest, for a year-one net of minus $1,466 at 21% and plus $10,812 at 37%. Total interest over the loan is $16,913, 24% of the price, and the year-one shield alone is $14,909 to $26,268.
Expensing the machine in year one is worth $14,909 to $26,268, which is more than any discount a Haas Factory Outlet will put on paper for a single VF-2. The 100% bonus rate removes the old reason to time purchases around a phase-down, so the only calendar constraint left is “placed in service” by 31 December, and a VF-2 built to stock in Oxnard makes that easy. We could not read Haas Financial Services’ rate sheet, so ask for it in the RFQ and compare against prime plus 2 before signing; the rate is one of the eleven items the switchgear quote anatomy taught us to pull onto a single line.
What to Do Monday
Price the whole bill, not the sticker. Take the base case CSV under the first chart, replace our three assumptions (cutting tools, coolant, resale) with your own shop’s numbers, and you have a ten-year cost that a used machine, an SS, or a Brother or DN Solutions quote must beat. Ask the distributor for freight, rigging, install and training on four lines, and for the option prices Haas will not show a bot, then run the total through Quote Check so the number sits next to the published list and the tooling catalog.
Write two things into the PO. First, the option list by Haas part description, so the machine that arrives is the machine that was quoted and the resale listing in 2032 can say so. Second, the placed-in-service date, because the $14,909 to $26,268 of year-one tax shield depends on the machine running before 31 December, not on the invoice date. Both are lines the distributor will accept without argument and both are missing from most machine-tool POs we have read.
If you bought or sold a VF-2 in the last three years, put the price into the Equipment Price Benchmark form. It takes two minutes, the price is never shown, and the cell publishes only when five contributors and eight quotes are in. Sixty-three listings and three prices is the state of the used market today, and it will stay that way until buyers, not dealers, supply the number.
Behind the paywall: the configuration that minimizes ten-year cost, which is not the SS and not the used 2018 that looks $11,769 cheaper on paper; the five checks that separate a $50,000 used VF-2 from a $50,000 problem; and what the Bid-Tab Price Book can and cannot say about machine tools this year.