Series
AI in machining
What AI changes in a machine shop's office, from drawing to quote, and why the price stays with the estimating team.
This series is about what AI changes in the office of a precision machine shop, and what it does not. A request arrives with a STEP model and a PDF drawing; someone reads the requirements, someone builds up a cost price and someone puts a price in the quote. At each of those steps, software promises to save time. The question that matters is where that time is really saved and who keeps the last word.
Our starting point is simple: software reads, sorts and prepares the sums, and the cost engineer decides. A value from the drawing is a proposal until someone confirms it, and a price is only a price when you can account for every line of it. Suites built for the engineering department and portals that hand back one figure leave out exactly that step.
The parts follow the route of a request. First what AI means for a shop as a whole, then where the time goes in quoting, what reading a drawing does and does not deliver, how to judge the numbers in an estimate, how one connected model runs from drawing to quote, and which questions to ask a vendor before you share drawings. Read them in order, or start with the question on your desk today.
All parts
- Part 1
What AI means for the modern precision machine shop
AI earns its place in the estimating office, where every request needs a cost price, as a proposal your cost engineer confirms or corrects.
- Part 2
Quote faster with AI, and set the price yourself
Most of the hours in a CNC quote go on retyping and looking things up, and that is where software should make the first proposal.
- Part 3
Can AI read an engineering drawing for a quote?
A requirement read from a drawing should only count in the cost price once the cost engineer has confirmed it.
- Part 4
How accurate is an AI estimate, line by line?
An AI estimate proves itself line by line, not with an accuracy figure on the total.
- Part 5
Software-driven machining starts at the request
Record a part once, at the request, and build every later step on that record.
- Part 6
What to ask an AI vendor about customer drawings
A customer drawing falls under your NDA, and the NDA decides what may happen to it in an AI tool.
Your knowledge. In every estimate.
Blake lays out the requirements from drawing and model as proposals and builds the cost per operation, with your own machines and rates. Your team decides.