Dublin-born inventor and engineer David McMurtry seems to be at home amidst the hum and whirr of 3D printers at the headquarters of his company, Renishaw, in Gloucestershire.

He’s no stranger to such environments, having grown up in Clontarf and spent some of his childhood among the machinery at his father’s sweet factory in Fairview.

He then moved to England to take up an apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce, where solving a problem on Concorde’s engines would set him on the path to creating a multi-billion-pound, FTSE 250-listed company with his co-founder, Welshman John Deer.

McMurtry is standing beside one of his latest protegées, Trinity College engineering graduate Louise Callanan, who he says “has come up through the ranks of the company”. They’re betting that the future of additive manufacturing – as they refer to this type of 3D printing – will be doing it at scale.

Callanan first worked as a summer intern at Renishaw’s operation in Swords 25 years ago. When the Irishwoman was appointed to her new role last month, she said: “I’m looking forward to taking up a new challenge in leading the additive manufacturing (AM) team and helping to continue the progression it has made over recent years.”

“AM technology is constantly evolving, as we have seen at Renishaw with the recent introduction of [two new Renishaw AM printers], which have expanded our strong product portfolio. As a team, we will continue to create tailored AM solutions that push boundaries for each customer and develop the personal support we provide to aid their product design.”

McMurtry explained: “I’ve worked closely with Louise throughout her Renishaw career, and have seen first-hand the energy, commitment and passion she brings to the business.

“She will drive the development of our vision for the AM group and will bring out the very best in those she works alongside. I have every confidence in Louise’s ability to keep our customers at the very heart of our business, and to find the right opportunities for growth.”

Geopolitical, labour, and supply chain woes mean more and more parts and components will be made this way. Machine owners will want the laser- and powder-based devices to keep cranking out parts as fast and efficiently as possible, as close to markets as possible.

As we chat at the end of an invitingly colourful table full of rolls, sandwiches and finger food laid out for Renishaw’s first investor and analyst day in three years, the 82 year-old is, he tells me, “devoting 100 per cent” of his time to this work at the firm he and Deer founded in 1973, with his passion of R&D at its heart.

A crucial role in semiconductor manufacturing

In talks and presentations to investors and analysts – and this writer – CEO Will Lee and other senior Renishaw executives promoted a theme of “transforming tomorrow together,” and collaborating through innovation and support.

They were also arguably more open than ever before about the use of the company’s precision measurement devices in semiconductor (also known as microchip) manufacturing. It was already known that they also play a role in smartphone production, with the contract manufacturers for Apple and Samsung previously among its biggest customers.

Lee explained: “Each machine at each stage of microchip making needs our precision measurement. From the photolithography stage, involving critical dimension measurement and then defect review, and wafer handling and inspection stages, to the printed circuit board manufacturing, routing, wire bonding, and testing stages.

“You’ve got demand for consumer electronics, the need for enhanced automation, reshoring of manufacturing – to the US in particular – as well as Moore’s Law contributing to demand.

“Several other drivers that have led to our focus on making our devices simpler to use are manufacturing staff sometimes being less skilled due to labour shortages, the focus on net zero [and cutting transport and other CO₂-generating activities from supply chains], industrialisation 4.0 or smart factories.”

These kinds of manufacturers want to use fewer staff in their processes while being able to produce parts and components more precisely and efficiently, using the minimum amount of material, he said.

Renishaw remains focused on organic growth rather than any acquisitions, with its R&D targeted at areas close to its existing markets in manufacturing and technology where the firm can bring meaningful innovation, its management team emphasised.

Steve Oakes, the head of Renishaw’s position measurement group, explained that the firm’s laser encoders start at around $50, right up to the highest-end ones costing $12,000 or more, which are used in high-end semiconductor manufacturing.

“The dearest ones operate in a vacuum, where they are used to inspect semiconductors and measure at the picometre (one trillionth of a metre) level.

“Advances in semiconductors mean that there are now more stages of manufacturing, requiring more measurement, control, and accuracy. More of that work is being automated,” he said.

“Demand for semiconductors – and there are the shortages we all know about – is coming from 5G, electric vehicles, the Internet of Things, the cloud, streaming, smart devices, automation and home working.

“Our devices would have been used in the M1 [and the recently announced M2] in Apple’s latest Macbooks. They’re also in LEDs used in smaller devices such as smartwatches.

“We’re seeing at the geopolitical level that Europe and the US are aiming for a level of self-sufficiency in manufacturing them. New factories are being built in the US, and Intel is investing $100 billion, over $30 billion of that in the EU.”

Renishaw doesn’t have direct relationships with the likes of Intel, Oakes added, but it works with companies that supply machines used by Intel.

“It’s a design relationship, so their designers speak to Renishaw’s experts in the relevant technologies. Microchip design is a nine-year cycle, so it’s a slow burner. But once you’re in the supply chain, you’re in.

“New business is usually won because we have superior technical products that are easy to use, and we have the capability to deliver reliably. Supply chain challenges mean that some customers of our rivals turned to us because we could deliver when the rival couldn’t.

“However, long-term success in this sector is achieved through targeted relationship-building over many years, through strong local technical and commercial capabilities.

“One requirement of working in it is that Intel or whoever is the end client insists that the machine makers mustn’t change the specification of the machines,” he added.

55 per cent of Renishaw’s customers are machine builders, 26 per cent of them end users, and the remaining 19 per cent machine distributors.

Working from home supported innovation

Renishaw has released eight new optical encoders in the past two years. One of these has a material impact on manufacturing efficiency. A breakthrough in its design means that a process that previously took 12 minutes now takes two minutes.

Oakes also referred to one customer whose staff previously used 800 hand tools for its measurement activities, which had associated staff, calibration, and maintenance costs.

These were replaced by six of Renishaw’s Equator machines, providing repeatable, greater precision than the previous hand tools did.

Despite the many negatives of the pandemic lockdowns, Renishaw’s engineers, scientists, and designers were given the opportunity to work from home when they needed to, so they could concentrate and focus on their work.

“That provided good thinking time. Some staff needed to be in the office five days a week, as and when that was allowed, while others might have been in the office perhaps once a fortnight, again when the rules allowed.”

In contrast, German rival Heidenhain, which was founded in Berlin, and has 7,000 employees and over $1 billion in revenues, didn’t allow working from home. “The semiconductor industry represents 20 per cent of its business,” Oakes added.

One of Renishaw’s new encoders, the Fortis, is designed for a market worth £250 million a year.

It’s specifically designed to be more robust, for use in harsher manufacturing environments where there is vibration and particles that might be in the air.

Oakes explains that it uses tuned mass dampers, inspired by their previous use in Formula One motor racing (and subsequently banned from the sport) by Benetton. They are also used in aircraft, and on power lines.

“This device can survive in conditions that a competitor’s device couldn’t. And a competitor arguably could not achieve what we have with this, so cannot compete with it. It’s also obviously patent-protected,” he added.

Metrology, precision measurement, and additive manufacturing combined are a £9.2 billion total addressable market, with anticipated compound annual growth of 7 per cent over the next five years.

Additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing, meanwhile, is a £1.2 billion market that McMurtry and Callanan plan to shake up with their next-generation machine. It will see 19 per cent compound annual growth.

While one of Renishaw’s existing AM machines has been used to make parts used in BAe’s Typhoon fighter jets, the company has revised its strategy, focusing on how the 3D metal printers can generate better productivity for customers that represent key accounts.

The challenge in this market, however, is that some key customer industries, such as aerospace and healthcare – a ball and socket joint used in a hip replacement is typically made of metal – are highly regulated, with sales cycles that therefore move very slowly.

The future will involve Renishaw’s 3D metal printers being used to make parts for more of its printers: the machines helping to build themselves, Callanan says.

“Traditionally, these machines were used in rapid prototyping. Aerospace and healthcare are key industries, yes. BAe’s next Tempest fighter jet will have 30 per cent of its parts made using AM technology.

“But future adoption could come from the consumer electronics space. The frame, or back cover of some smartphones, tablets, or other devices could be 3D printed, for example.

“We think this could be a future platform to deliver a multiplier effect in reducing the cost per part. We can see there’s room for further innovation in handling the powder and parts, while reducing the time that the laser is off, so it’s used more efficiently.

“That then could see AM applied to sectors that have been slow to take it up so far. We want to see a step-change, opening up sectors that haven’t adopted it yet, or where it’s not yet competitive with traditional manufacturing. We want to outcompete traditional manufacturing technologies,” she said.

More widely, because of supply chain challenges, Renishaw is also manufacturing more of the components and parts it needs itself.

Renishaw’s medical robots face various hurdles

However, some investors and analysts appear to view the additive manufacturing and medical robots element of Renishaw’s business as McMurtry’s pet projects.

As an example of the pitfalls where its medical robots are concerned, one large pharmaceutical firm that combined one with its drug subsequently discovered the drug was toxic during a pre-clinical phase, according to one Renishaw executive.

Previously, there were also collaborations with partners including Pfizer in the areas of brain tumours, Huntington's disease, and Parkinson’s disease, but Pfizer pulled out.

A number of UK hospitals continue to use the robots, and there remains a focus on various methods of delivering drugs using them, in partnership with other pharmaceutical company partners, Renishaw maintains.

The last two years have also seen Renishaw increase its staff by 20 per cent, with a 70 per cent increase in productivity, as measured by productive hours. Kaizen, the concept of continuous improvement, informs all of the company’s activities under Lee’s stewardship.

This, coupled with agility and designing for manufacture, have for decades informed the thinking at the company since it was led by McMurtry, and this is still the case.

Oakes pointed to an industry-first achieved by the company, with the use of blue light lasers for high accuracy tool measurement. Others use red lasers, but blue ones are more valuable to customers in the moulded and dyed parts, as well as the semiconductor and aerospace industries.

It facilitates smaller measurements of more intricate tools, down to two microns in terms of accuracy, thanks to a blue laser’s different light wavelength. Previously, it was only possible to measure down to 30 microns. For comparison, the width of a human hair is between 80 and 100 microns.

Oakes also referred to family-owned German rival company Blum-Novotest, headquartered in Grünkraut in Baden-Wurttemberg, which employs 550 people around the world, as a firm that continues to use red lasers.

“We’re no longer a follower in the laser market. We’re leading it,” Oakes claimed.

But the future of Renishaw remains uncertain

For Renishaw, this adds up to forecast revenue for this financial year of between £655 million and £675 million, with £155 million to £170 million of profit.

At a Q&A session at the end of the day, having heard from CEOs and division heads, investors and analysts had a chance to question the company’s board and McMurtry himself.

The elephant in the room was the failed sale process that concluded after four months last July. Siemens was reportedly one firm that ran the rule over it.

Renishaw shares peaked at £65 last year, but are now hovering around the £39-40 mark, down about 40 per cent.

McMurtry’s stake of 36 per cent and Deer’s further 17 per cent means they dictate the company’s fate. They had stipulated that a buyer must respect the company’s culture and heritage, and not cut its UK and Irish workforce.

“It was an invaluable exercise, because we realised opportunities in the value chain that had perhaps previously gone untapped.

“The company significantly benefited. We learned a lot and applied the lessons to our future strategy,” said Lee.

McMurtry succinctly added: “We’re still discussing lots of different options for the future, but no further decisions have been made about a sale.”

McMurtry’s Mind Palace: a peek through the windows of the Sherlock house

The previous afternoon, having navigated a narrow, winding country road, I had arrived in a yard adjacent to McMurtry’s £29 million Swinhay House.

The futuristic mansion had a starring role in the BBC’s Sherlock series in 2014 as Appledore, the lair of Charles Magnussen, a criminal mastermind played by Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen, star of House of Cards, Borgen, Star Wars Rebels, and The Killing.

McMurtry had told me in a previous interview how much he and his children and grandchildren  – seemingly all fans of the series – had enjoyed meeting him, along with actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

McMurtry Automotive MD Thomas Yates greets me, asking if I’d like to get a closer look at the house, and a walk around its gardens, before we have a chat back in the car company’s workshop and HQ.

We venture further down a laneway in his Tesla Model 3,  reaching an entrance to the house, in front of which are two ponds that are home to a small gaggle of geese and ducks.

It seems that McMurtry owns quite a bit of land in the surrounding area. He could probably walk across his own land to the Renishaw HQ on the other side of its nearby Cotswolds village home, Wotton-under-Edge, that can just about be seen in the distance across the fields.

Surrounded by hills, lush green fields, woodland, and a nearby valley, the village is also on the Cotswold Way, a walking trail popular with tourists and hikers.

The gardens surrounding Swinhay – which McMurtry designed himself, and then one of his sons-in-law built – are relatively simply manicured and maintained. Peeking through one window of the house, there is an indoor winter garden.

At one stage, a son and a daughter of McMurtry’s children lived in the vast 23,000sqft house, which also features a squash court, 25-metre swimming pool, and bowling lane.

It was subsequently offered to various charities for outdoor theatre productions or on a commercial basis for fashion and other events.

The remarkable exterior of the building is a mixture of glass, slate and stone. One section has a glass roof. Its heating and cooling is provided by ground-to-air heat pumps, with the ponds also playing a role.

It’s understandable that an inventor might aspire to live in a home he has designed himself. However, Mrs McMurtry had other ideas.

As the Irishman told me in 2012: “I saw I could build a house in an area of outstanding natural beauty through a British government scheme marking the Millennium that allowed a limited number of new country houses to be built because none had been built this century.”

“I took the bait, which I now deeply regret. I was interested in it being energy efficient and super-insulated.

“But I've never lived there. My wife said, 'no way.’”

“We live in a converted barn nearby, where my wife can more easily tend to the house and garden.”

“Ireland’s answer to Bruce Wayne”

Over our lunch in the Renishaw HQ the next day, McMurtry briefly described how he formed McMurtry Automotive to work with Yates on its Spéirling car.

“I found Thomas after approaching Bath University, and asking who won its Formula Student competition. Later on when I tracked him down, he was working for the Mercedes Formula One team.

“The car was supposed to be a retirement project for me. We have hopes for it at Goodwood [and its Festival of Speed this month] and perhaps in future at Le Mans [the 24-hour endurance race].

“After that we hope to have a road car. I think some people will want to have a family-size car, and then a single person one for commuting, but which is also fun on the track in terms of performance. There might be a two-seater version as well.

“The team is making great strides in battery technology. One of the secrets to what they’ve done is in how they configure the battery cells, but we’re not saying too much more about it yet.”

With a mischievous nod to the Spéirling’s Batmobile-like looks, one of the hosts at the GQ Car Awards in London earlier this year comically referred to McMurtry as “Ireland’s answer to Bruce Wayne,” the billionaire industrialist behind the Batman mask.

While the Spéirling won the prototype of the year award, McMurtry wasn’t the only Irishman there. Cool Planet CEO Norman Crowley won the off-roader of the year award for the electric Land Rover Croxford Defender, made by his Wicklow-based company AVA.

Back with Yates, we were on the first floor of the McMurtry Automotive office, in a modern large shed-type building that’s been converted for commercial use. A friendly Black Labrador belonging to one of the staff is happily lazing on the floor near my feet.

“Sometimes there are four or five dogs there all belonging to the team, but all getting along,” McMurtry told me with a smile the following day.

According to the latest accounts, up until June last year, he had invested £6.7 million in the company in the form of a loan.

He checks in on the team once or twice a week. It’s emerged that one of his sons is also involved in the firm.

“Some people there thought we were testing some sort of compact electric jet engine.”

Thomas Yates

Looking around the office, nearly all of the chairs are ergonomic Recaro-type ones, of the type also used by racing drivers. Two fairly basic-looking track cars are actually hanging on a wall opposite where I’m standing.

Yates breezily enthuses about the Spéirling. “I suppose you could say it’s inspired by nostalgia. In terms of the size, it’s modelled on a 1960s F1 car, of the kind that Stirling Moss won with in Monaco in 1961. Other inspiration, and some safety features, are taken from Le Mans, LMP-1 type cars.

“Fan technology was used in the 1970s, but then it was banned from motorsport. This car is wholly designed around the fan.

“Four years ago or so, David said: ‘why not suck it to the ground?’,” but I thought it would be impossible.

“Nevertheless, we decided to take on the challenge. We began with static rigs, then fans on trailers, and then we actually bought an old ambulance.

“Why an ambulance? It had the space, the load rating, and the speed. If you want the fastest van you can get that doesn’t cost silly money, it’s an ambulance.

“We tested it at the Thruxton motor racing circuit, an hour and a half's drive away. It was all fairly secretive. Some people there thought we were testing some sort of compact electric jet engine,” he laughs.

Inspired by aircraft design

Working with McMurtry, Yates says, has been “a fascinating opportunity to create a dream team.

“He’s always up to speed on what we’re doing. Often he’ll question us about an aspect of the work he’s spotted as soon as he walks into the workshop. Straight away, he’ll see something we might not have thought about.

“He’s a phenomenal inventor: a genius through and through. With the fans on the car for example, he was inspired by aircraft design, where certain components have dual redundancy. So there are actually two fans on the car, in case one fails.

“David’s work has probably greatly improved all of our experiences of anything mechanical that we use in our lives, if you think about it.

“His touch-trigger probe could precisely measure something that had been manufactured, so for example, ensuring that two components fit precisely and work together correctly.”

When Yates got the call from McMurtry in 2016, he was working for the Mercedes Formula One team.

During his student days at Bath University, his team’s success in the Formula Student competition had enabled them to travel to Silverstone, California, and Germany to compete.

When he took the call, he was working in a job where his role was to make Mercedes’s hybrid engine as powerful as possible. Often that involved running the engines 24 hours a day until they exploded, and then diagnosing what had caused that.

A former racer of go-karts and rally cars, after university he had got a student placement with the team in 2014. His claim to fame in the role was developing an engine tweak that arguably gave Lewis Hamilton an extra half a horsepower of torque.

One of the most power-dense batteries in existence

Standing beside the Spéirling in the McMurtry workshop, the most striking thing is how compact it is. “It’s about half the size of a modern F1 car,” Yates told me.

McMurtry Automotive has various patents on the car: the fan system, and the skirting system around where the fans are located that enables them to suck the car to the ground.

Because of the speed at which the car can corner, a driver needs to react fast and turn the wheel quickly enough to keep it on the road, meaning that the power steering is specially made for that task – it is also patented.

The fans deliver downforce much more efficiently than wings on a car. The skirting system minimises the power required to seal the car against the track.

The 60kw battery is about the same capacity as that of Yates’ Tesla Model 3, but it wraps around the driver in a U-shape, within the carbon fibre body.

“This is one of the most power-dense batteries in existence. It could deliver whatever 0 to 60mph time you want – maybe the limit is 1.8 or 1.9 seconds. What limits it is the adhesion of the tyres,” he claimed.

Several weeks after we meet, a post on the firm’s social media reveals that it has surpassed that figure, achieving 0-60mph under 1.5 seconds, and generating 2,000kg of downforce.

“This is a golden ticket to deliver world-beating levels of performance, redefining what is possible.

“We’ve seen it achieve within 10 seconds of Max Chilton’s fastest ever qualifying time at Silverstone. There’s simply nothing else that comes close to that,” Yates added.

The battery can also be replenished under braking, but its capacity to do so depends on the battery temperature. The warmer it is, the better it can be replenished through regeneration. The company’s third version of the battery will feature improved performance in this regard, Yates said.

In a race situation, the simplest way to refuel the battery would be from another McMurtry battery. “It would be a short, sharp burst in a pit stop, perhaps 600kwh, so not enough for a complete recharge. 

“They’re trying to do this in the electric Formula E series, but only achieving around a 10 per cent recharge per pit stop.

“We have NDAs in place [related to this]. I can’t say any more,” he added.

A future road car?

“We haven’t got all the answers about how a road car would look. It might need to have adjustable ride height, for example, because the skirting system might scrape over potholes and speed bumps.

“This is a zero-emission car that would be compatible with city commutes, so it would be fun on the road, but you could go crazy on a track with it at weekends.

“What we can say is that this will be a unique experience, not replicable in anything else, and a pure driving experience. But it’s likely to be produced in modest volumes,” Yates said.

What is that likely to cost? It might be £1.5 million or more – so for a very exclusive market, he adds.

“Pure electric cars suit small form factors. You see it in Formula E. In mass-market cars, they’re all subject to the same increasing regulations around safety and fuel efficiency, so they all tend to look very similar.

“We are exploring our options with the battery technology. It’s attracting a lot of interest. It’s also worth noting what is happening elsewhere.

“If you look at Williams Advanced Engineering, it was bought by a mining company, because of the huge fuel bill it had for diesel for its mining vehicles.

“You’ve got massive players [that make various types of vehicles] that need to stop using diesel,” Yates revealed, hinting at the kind of talks that might be taking place.

“The breakthroughs we’ve made in battery technology will hopefully give us the commercial and financial freedom to continue innovating, and taking risks, rather than following the conventional commercial path of a car company,” he concluded intriguingly.