PLM
DemystifyingPLM
All Articles

CNC Articles

In-depth analysis tagged CNC — covering PLM history, vendor strategy, and the technical decisions reshaping engineering software.

3 articles

Lambda Function and up2parts: How Two Founders Automated the Most Painful Part of Manufacturing Sales

CNC quoting is one of the highest-friction, most error-prone processes in precision manufacturing — and it is almost entirely manual. Lambda Function and up2parts (OptoParts) both built AI-driven automation for different parts of the manufacturing workflow, starting from the practitioner's perspective: Lambda from inside a CNC machine shop, up2parts from a decade of manufacturing domain expertise. The result is workflow automation that eliminates the category of work that kills manufacturing company growth.

· 8 min read

Limitless CNC and Dirac: The 80/20 Rule of Manufacturing AI — Augment the Human, Don't Replace Them

Limitless CNC and Dirac are both operating from the same premise: the right role for AI in manufacturing is to handle the 80% of tasks that are routine, repetitive, and rule-based — freeing experienced engineers to spend their time on the 20% that requires judgment, expertise, and accountability. That framing matters because the alternative framing — AI as replacement — creates organizational resistance that kills adoption before the technology gets a chance to prove itself.

· 8 min read

Productive Machines and Manukai: Taking Machining AI from Research Lab to Shop Floor

Productive Machines spent 10 years developing a digital twin for CNC machining processes at the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Center before commercializing it. Manukai applied frontier AI models — designed for text and reasoning — to CNC machining optimization. Both are solving the same underlying problem: aerospace manufacturers are running on tribal knowledge, and the engineers who hold it are retiring.

· 9 min read