The Värnamo (later VMA) company began life in 1916 when four young men, John Källberg, Arvid Larsson, Hjalmar Larsson and Gunner Larsson, started their first engineering workshop. As was often the case in such circumstances, initial work concentrated on sub-contract machining, the main customer being the maker of shaping machines, Malmstens Mekaniska Verkstad. In time, indigenous machines began production, including emery grinders and - appropriate for a country covered in vast forests - woodworking machines such as planers, circular saws, nailing machines and bandsaws for the furniture industry. By this time the company was known as Värnamo Maskin AB (or VMA) and exports had already started, mainly of woodworking machines to England. In 1932 the company had grown large enough to take over Malmstens Mekaniska Verkstad, a firm founded in 1892 and whose machine tools - mainly shapers as mentioned - had a world-wide reputation for quality. VMA continued to make shapers until as late as the 1970s - with milling machines (no doubt due to a demand created by WW2) being introduced in 1941. By the early 1950s millers in production included the UA-1, U2, and MAF 3-U and from 1956 onwards, driven by a continuing and huge post-WW2 war demand, milling machines became the main product and the manufacture of wood machinery was gradually abandoned.
Värnamo millers were, like all Swedish-made machine tools, of high quality. In their early, basic form, most were of a simple, horizontal knee type and of conventional arrangement. As with other makers, Värnamo offered the majority of their models with a wide variety of vertical heads including three different ones in the form of self-powered rams that replaced the ordinary horizontal overarm. Such heads, being undependably driven with speeds appropriate to vertical milling, converted very ordinary millers into something very much more useful and versatile - a type known by VMA as their "Multi-Mill". The ram types included, for larger models, the V-2B with a single-swivelling head; the VU-4B with a double-swivel head and the V-2H, this having a single-swivel head with a quill able to be moved by both a quick feed lever and a fine feed handwheel. For smaller millers such as the P-1, U-1 and P-1A the ram heads were listed as the V-1D with a single-swivelling head; the VU-1A with a double-swivel head and the V-1H, this having a single-swivel head with a quill able to be moved by both a quick-feed lever and a fine-feed handwheel
Some of the most popular industrial models by Värnamo were the Types U, P and F, these being marketed as the U-2, U-2L, P-2, P-2L, P-2a, FU-3, FP-3 (these are shown on the page below) while for smaller workshops and training schools the long-lived Models P-1, U-1 and P-1A were good sellers. Other types by Värnamo, and their accessories, can be found in the hyperlinks at the top and bottom of each page. All models of each range tended to share an almost common knee and table assembly - but with spindle speeds and table feed rates adjusted as necessary to each model's specific function.
In 1966 the company reached its 50th anniversary and probably the apogee of its success, with around 140 employees and 50% of production exported. Even though as early as 1962 the first millers by VMA with NC controls had been built, faced with increasing competition from larger and better-funded competitors and the introduction of sophisticated and complex CNC machining centres, by 1992 (in common with so many other small machine tool companies in the UK and Europe) VMA had closed. Finally, in 2000, the remains of the derelict factory were demolished.
In this section of the Machine Tool Archive you should be able to find almost every model of milling machine made by Värnamo - or at least those exported to the UK. If any Swedish reader has factory catalogues in Swedish, or other languages, the writer would be pleased to add them to this section..