Thirty years of drawings, quoted in minutes
Caleb's second-generation machine shop quotes repeat and near-repeat work from three decades of drawings — by searching for what a part looks like.
Caleb runs the machine shop his father started thirty years ago. The shop's most valuable asset isn't a machine — it's the paper trail of three decades: drawings, job folders, setup notes, and the quote behind every part they've ever made, plus everything his father's generation knew and mostly never wrote down. The problem was getting to any of it. When a request came in for a part the shop had "definitely made before," finding the old job meant an afternoon of digging through cabinets — so some quotes went out late, and some never went out at all.
Thirty years of work, one searchable place
Caleb's team brought it all into ManuFind: the digital files straight from their drives, and the paper through the bulk scanning service, which reads every page and turns it into searchable text. They set up a handful of projects to keep things tidy — one per major customer, with sub-folders for the big jobs — and ManuFind handled the rest, reading and tagging every document automatically as it came in. Now anyone in the shop can search the entire history or ask ManuFinder AI a question about it in plain language: "what material did we use on the Hartley job?" "have we ever held a tolerance this tight on stainless?"
Search with a picture, not a part number
Machinists don't always remember what an old job was called — but they know what the part looks like. So ManuFind lets them search with a picture: drop in a photo of the new part or its drawing, and it pulls up the past drawings that look like it. The near-repeat job from 2011 that nobody quite remembered shows up in seconds, with its notes and final pricing attached.
Open any drawing, anywhere in the shop
Every drawing — including 3D models — opens right in the web browser, on the shop floor or in the front office, with no special software needed. The team looks at the actual part together while they talk through the job, instead of passing around printouts.
Quotes from history, with an expert at the wheel
With the comparable jobs found, Caleb's estimator asks ManuFinder AI for a first draft of the quote, built from what the shop actually ran last time — materials, operations, setup times, what they charged and whether they won. Then he does what only he can do: checks it against today's material prices and the shop's current workload, adjusts, and sends it. Requests that used to take days now turn around the same day, and the shop quotes work it used to pass on, because looking is no longer expensive.
The founder's knowledge stays
Caleb's father still comes in on Tuesdays, and now his stories have somewhere to go: notes, photos of old fixtures, the "why" behind the unusual setups — uploaded next to the jobs they belong to, where ManuFind ties them together. Every question answered from the archive is one that no longer depends on someone's memory. The shop's first thirty years now work for its next thirty. Request a demo.