As reported in the November 2026 issue of Trumpf TRUe Magazine:
Technology creates opportunities for gaming manufacturer to win new business
For more than five decades, VSR Industries has successfully manufactured products for its famously demanding casino customers. The company thrives on speed, service, precision and trust, and fills a unique niche in the gaming industry.
From its headquarters just outside Las Vegas in Henderson, Nevada, VSR Industries designs, produces and installs slot machines, slot bases, locks, and custom cabinets, all manufactured in the United States. Unlike its competitors that often subcontract manufacturing to others, VSR controls the full process in-house, from raw material to finished and installed product.
President and CEO Colt Vollmann has been with VSR since 1996, and he knows the business inside and out. “We manufacture products for nearly every casino in the United States and internationally,” he says. Each year, VSR’s more than 350 employees produce approximately 30,000 slot bases, 15,000 slot machines, and about 600,000 locks. With unique designs for each customer, a slot machine can require 250 customized parts, available at a moment’s notice. That intense focus has served the company well. Year over year, VSR has seen a 12 percent increase in sales and is a dominant player in the global gaming industry.
“VSR has been growing and gaining more customers, so we keep adding TRUMPF equipment to stay ahead of demand and meet new opportunities.”
– VSR Industries President and CEO Colt Vollmann
Success in gaming manufacturing brings its own pressures. Casino customers expect flexibility, quick turnaround, and quality service. “We have a deep understanding of the business. Casino work is day-to-day and week-to-week, often with last-minute changes and ‘I need it yesterday’ deadlines,” says Vollmann. “There’s not a lot of lead time in the gaming market, but we meet customer timelines with flexibility.” For VSR, freedom to succeed means having the manufacturing potential to respond to whatever comes their way.
To keep up with increasing orders for its products, VSR has grown its sheet metal manufacturing capabilities exponentially. Today, the company owns about 45 TRUMPF machines spread across more than 200,000 square feet of floor space. “VSR has been growing and gaining more customers, so we keep adding TRUMPF equipment to stay ahead of demand and meet new opportuni-ties,” explains Vollmann.
“Our state-of-the-art equipment roster and our experience ensure we can deliver whatever our customers can dream up.”
For more than thirty years, VSR successfully manufactured slot bases out of 14-gage sheet metal, cutting more than fifteen parts per base that needed to be bent, welded and assembled. As business grew, so did the products’ size. Modern slot machines have increased in proportions, and casinos have moved toward larger and heavier premium machines. With bigger screens and more electronics, sound capabilities, and security hardware, slot machines can now weigh more than double their previous weight and require additional stability. That meant VSR needed to create an even more robust base to handle the bigger load.
A local fabricator and a TRUMPF sales representative had been urging Vollmann to consider tube laser technology for years, but a trip to Germany convinced him to make the investment. “I saw it in action and finally understood its potential,” says Vollmann. Six
months before the two TruLaser Tube 3000s arrived, VSR engineers brainstormed with the TRUMPF team in Connecticut and collaborated on ways to transform the base design for tube lasers. The result was a strong product and leaner process: five parts instead of fifteen, fewer bends, less labor, and fewer downstream processes. According to Vollmann, the TruLaser Tube is the technology that’s made the biggest impact to VSR’s production.
“We completely changed the slot base design to use tubes instead of sheet metal, which resulted in a huge savings and an 80 per-cent time reduction,” says Vollmann. “Looking at the increase in throughput and elimination of labor, the TruLaser Tube technolo-gy has been one of the greatest things we’ve added to our shop floor.” Innovation, improvement and the integrity of its products are important to VSR, so the company sent the new base with reworked tube design to a lab, where it successfully proved its strength and ability to handle 2,000 pounds of torque.
With more than 3,500 customers worldwide, VSR continually moves large volumes through its production lines. To meet that level of productivity, uptime is critical. “Every machine needs to be running,” explains Vollmann. The company operates at more than 80 percent capacity, so a stopped machine could quickly become a problem. In fact, service reliability was the main reason VSR moved away from another provider and deepened its relationship with TRUMPF. The strong service TRUMPF provides, in addition to its education, training and innovative technology, are an integral part of why VSR chooses TRUMPF over other suppliers.
“With TRUMPF’s online tech support and troubleshooting, my techs can fix a quick error,” he adds. He also praises the robust design of his forty-five press brakes. “I rarely have a down press brake, which is huge with the volume we do. The press brakes are simple to maintain. TRUMPF shows us what needs to be done, and we take care of it.” For more complex technology, such as flatbed and tube lasers and combination machines, the company finds service agreements to be helpful for machine maintenance. The service agreements allow the company to stay focused on produc-tion, quality and customer deadlines.
Another strong catalyst for growth has been VSR’s expansion – beyond slot bases and locks – into cabinet production and a new vertical market. TRUMPF supports the company’s success with this work too. “The combination machines are an integral part of our growth in the slot cabinet market,” says Vollmann, explaining the value of technology that can efficiently produce radius cuts, louvers, countersinks, and other features. “A slot machine is not a square box; it has many contours and louvers and different cutouts. I abso-lutely love our (TruLaser) 1030 flatbed laser, but neither the laser nor punch alone can handle these parts as fast as the combination.”
With the combination punch-laser, VSR can create those features on one machine instead of moving parts through several oper-ations. The TruMatic machines have reduced secondary work, improved quality, and shortened cycle time. “In the past, I’d use multiple types of machines to produce the one sheet that now comes off the combination machine,” says Vollmann. In some cases, the combination machines have cut production times in half.
The technology also makes the company more competitive for non-gaming work. “We’re doing a lot of contract manufacturing, producing other company’s designs, and without the combination machines, we probably wouldn’t be able to handle those types of jobs,” emphasizes Vollmann.
VSR’s next chapter may extend beyond casinos. As Vollmann sees it, the opportunity is simple. “To continue growing, we need to diversify and look beyond the gaming industry,” he says. The com-pany is actively pursuing work for additional industries, and win-ning jobs for data center racks, enclosures and other metal parts. “The TRUMPF equipment opens doors to new potential customers for us.” For VSR Industries, that’s what liberty looks like on the shop floor: the freedom to serve a demanding core market while building the capacity to pursue new ones. Says Vollmann, “we can do anything with the equipment and with TRUMPF behind us.”
Established in 1969, VSR Industries has grown from a simple locksmith operation into a manufacturing powerhouse, with over 300 employees and locations across the globe with headquarters in Nevada. While VSR Industries has been in operation for 5 decades, we have maintained a focus on customer satisfaction and the quality of our products (which include Cam Locks, Slot Bases, Custom Millwork, Cabinets, and more), and we are proud to say that all manufacturing is done in house here in the United States which allows us to control every aspect of what becomes your final product. No other company in our industry can make this claim.
VSR is proud to say that we have established ourselves in over 90% of the global casino market, with over 3,500 customers worldwide and over 10 million VSR locks in the field today.
Beyond that is the fact that we manufacture and test 100% of our products in-house. As a result, if there is an issue with one of our products, you know you are dealing with the manufacturer directly and not a company that has to subcontract to a third party to get your problem fixed.
From design to manufacturing to sales — it all happens here.