I believe that I've heard this sort of thing called a "carbon based" CNC before
referring to the carbon based computer that runs the thing.While this is cool and all, I think people are really missing the strengths of CNC when they refer to a duplicator as a "poor man's CNC". While CNC machines are indeed great at making the same thing over and over, their true strength lies in being able to make extremely complex one offs with a very short turn around between design and manufacture. Duplicators depend on a hand made (or whatever kind of made) physical template and the speed of the turn around depends on how quickly you can modify the template. In CNC, the template is the CAD model and those can usually be changed or created pretty darn quick.
As an example, I have a parametric CAD model for fretboards. There's about 8 or 9 parameters (e.g. width at the nut, radius at the nut, scale length etc.) that I input into a table and one mouse click later, I have a new updated model based on those custom parameters. Couple more mouse clicks and I've got G-code to cut a customized fretboard. Literally, less than 5 minutes of work if my computer's already booted up.
While duplicators are very cool and all and in probably a lot of cases are a more cost effective choice than CNC for a lot of applications, they're certainly not a poor man's CNC. Again, don't take this as a knock, just sharing my opinion.