Our Story
"There's got to be a better way to program this."
Every machinist and programmer knows the feeling. You're staring at a complex part, knowing there's a better way to program it. But finding that "better way" means diving into forums, hunting through old notes, or hoping someone in the shop has done something similar before.
We've lived this reality. For nearly two decades, we've been in the trenches – from running machines to writing complex programs, wrestling with tribal knowledge scattered across notebooks, spreadsheets, and shop-floor conversations. We've seen too many skilled professionals reinvent the wheel, spending countless hours in trial-and-error when that knowledge should have been at their fingertips.
That's why we built Swarf.
We're a team of machinists, programmers, and engineers who believe our trade deserves better tools. Not just another CAM package, but an AI copilot that captures and shares the hard-won wisdom of our craft. We're building what we wished we had when we started – an intelligent assistant that transforms scattered tribal knowledge into practical guidance, combining your shop's context with global expertise to help every machinist work like their best programmer.
The Beginning of Swarf
In the summer of 2024, two paths converged at the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit. Riley Hutchinson and Irvin Wang, coming from different backgrounds but sharing a common vision, met and immediately recognized a shared passion for solving manufacturing challenges.
Despite working with machine shops in entirely different regions—Riley in Oregon and Irvin in Illinois—they discovered they were witnessing the exact same problems: CNC programmers struggling with scattered knowledge, inefficient workflows, and the constant reinvention of solutions.
What started as a conversation about regional manufacturing challenges quickly evolved into a broader vision. Both had been following advancements in AI and recognized its transformative potential for CNC programming. They saw an opportunity to create an AI copilot that would combine shop-specific context with global expertise, fundamentally changing how machining knowledge is captured and applied across the industry. From that initial meeting, they committed to working together on a mission bigger than either had originally envisioned.
Swarf was born from this partnership, an AI-powered platform designed to address the universal challenges they observed in machine shops across the country. By leveraging artificial intelligence to capture tribal knowledge and guide programming decisions, Swarf would help every machinist work like their best programmer, regardless of shop size or location.
Our Founders' Journeys
Riley Hutchinson
Co-Founder
Riley's journey to founding Swarf is rooted in firsthand experience with the challenges of CNC programming. After studying Mechanical Engineering and Machine Tool Technology, he spent over a decade at Boeing, working his way up from Precision Assembler to CNC Programmer and eventually becoming a CNC Programming Technical Lead.
During his time at Boeing, Riley supported over 40 CNC Programmers and witnessed the constant struggle with tribal knowledge and dispersed information. He led projects including the installation of multi-million dollar machining cells, created new hire training processes, and implemented numerous systemic process improvements.
Recognizing the need for better knowledge management in manufacturing, Riley developed multiple internal web applications, including a tech support ticketing system, a cutting tool request application, and a tool that could parse thousands of g-code files. His most impactful project was migrating the team's knowledge from scattered documents into a searchable GitLab pages website - a precursor to what would eventually become Swarf.
This hands-on experience highlighted a universal problem in CNC machining: the inefficient, analog workflows that slow down programming and increase errors. In January 2024, Riley founded Machiineit, a venture focused on running standardized CNC machines on standardized platforms so that customers could control them remotely—essentially creating an "AWS for physical CNC machining." However, after meeting Irvin and recognizing the critical importance of solving the knowledge management problem first, Riley put Machiineit on hold to focus fully on developing Swarf.
Irvin Wang
Co-Founder
Irvin brings a blend of manufacturing expertise and business acumen to Swarf. His journey into the world of manufacturing began at IndustrialNext, a 50-person manufacturing AI startup. As COO, he led the business operations and worked directly with electronics and automotive manufacturers to implement cutting-edge automation solutions.
His hands-on experience included leading customer discovery meetings at factories across the globe—from China and Vietnam to Mexico, Canada, and the USA. This gave him an intimate understanding of the universal challenges manufacturers face across the globe and throughout the supply chain.
In 2023, Irvin founded MPN, a platform to help digitize the customer quoting and supplier response process for local Illinois machine shops. This experience provided invaluable insights into the daily challenges of small and medium-sized machine shops—the precise issues that Swarf now addresses at a larger scale.
Throughout his journey working with manufacturers, Irvin witnessed skilled machinists spending excessive time searching for information and recreating solutions to problems that had been solved countless times before. This realization, combined with his experience building technical solutions, made Swarf a natural extension of his work—an opportunity to transform how machine shops operate by digitizing tribal knowledge and creating structure around manufacturing processes, ultimately making shops more efficient, profitable, and sustainable.
Our Values
This isn't just about software. It's about preserving and evolving our trade's expertise. It's about giving the next generation of manufacturing professionals the tools to build on our collective knowledge. It's about respecting the craft while embracing innovation.
We're machinists building for machinists. And we're just getting started.
Let's make some chips!
The Swarf Team