When I first met Steven Camilleri in 2023, the CTO of additive manufacturing (AM) OEM SPEE3D shared a quote with me from Clayton Christensen, the late Harvard professor who popularized the idea of “disruptive innovation“: “The problem of any disruptive technology is not a technological one, but a marketing one,” said Camilleri via Christensen, with Camilleri adding: “Just imagine all the stuff that’s latent, sitting around in society right now, that could be incredibly valuable.But because the people that have it are no good at marketing it, it doesn’t happen.” Camilleri gave the impression that he wasn’t just aware of that reality, but haunted by it.That impression has been confirmed by Camilleri’s latest endeavor, Make Stuff Here, which is both related to and separate from his work at SPEE3D.
While it is still in its early stages, the initiative’s foundation is clear: to urge Australians to take seriously the idea that they can become a global leader in industrial innovation — and to illustrate the reasons why they should want that—why that is a goal worth working towards.Camilleri published the founding document for this campaign on SPEE3D’s website, under a title that is simultaneously simple and grandiose, “A Blueprint to Reinvigorate Australia’s Economy”.Individuals who have grown weary of reading that sort of thing will be pleased to discover that it is no mere emotionally-loaded call-to-arms, but an economically-grounded strategy backed up by analyzing the numbers in a variety of industrial value chains.
Above all, the blueprint is concerned with “value density“, “the ratio between the value of goods being transported and the physical space they occupy,” or, as Camilleri puts it, “the price per kilogram of what we export”: “The more value we add to a product, the higher its value density, and the more profitable and competitive it becomes,” Camilleri writes in “A Blueprint to Reinvigorate Australia’s Economy.” “Why not make the higher-value stuff here? Take Australian wool, for example.Raw fleece sells for $4-6 per kilogram.Clean and grade it, and it doubles in value.
Spin it into yarn, and it’s worth $25-50 per kilogram.Weave it into fine fabric, and the price jumps to $50-150.Craft that fabric into a luxury wool suit, and you’re looking at $500-1,000 per kilogram or more.
Yet most of the time, we stop at the first step, exporting the raw fleece and leaving the higher-value work — and profits — to others.” Image courtesy of Make Stuff Here Camilleri then applies this same essential formula to multiple other diverse industries, such as metals refining, electronics, advanced vehicles, and construction.In all cases, no matter how complex the specific market is, the elegantly simple recommendation running through all of Camilleri’s diagnoses is to “climb the value chain.” Image courtesy of Make Stuff Here And, even as he has the numbers and the examples to back up his argument, for Camilleri, this is all still very much a labor of love.When I spoke recently with the SPEE3D co-founder about Make Stuff Here, it was like we’d picked up right where we’d left off in our conversation from two years ago.
This set of topics is clearly never very far from the front of his mind: “One of the big differences between Australia and the US is that we’re very isolated from the rest of the world, and it’s made us very good at solving our own problems,” Camilleri explained.“While we may not value ourselves for this trait as much I think we should, we do a lot of invention here — a ‘necessity as the mother of invention’ kind of country.Combine harvesters were invented here, for instance.
The black box [flight recorder] was invented here.A whole range of medical tech was invented in Australia.“On the other hand, we haven’t done very well, historically, in terms of profiting off of our own inventiveness.
In the past, we’ve excelled at primary industries like agriculture and mining, but our ability to translate that into a capacity for manufacturing has seen mixed results.We had a fairly significant automotive manufacturing industry in Australia for almost a century, but at this point we haven’t made cars here for the better part of 10 years.All this has led to what I think is a nasty hit to our national self-esteem.” While there are obviously quantifiable metrics associated with this issue, I think Camilleri gets it right when he frames it as “a failure of culture”: “We don’t seem to value the idea of developing our own industry in Australia.
We very much rely on what I call dirt industries,” Camilleri continued.“Industries dependent on pulling things out of the dirt and shipping them elsewhere, like coal-mining, extracting iron ore, etc.What we’ve failed at is turning those underpinnings into a fully-fledged high-tech economy, and I can’t help but think that one of the main reasons for that is we just don’t believe we can do it.
“In that sense, it’s not so much a practical problem as it is an emotional one.What we’re trying to do with Make Stuff Here is to change that narrative.There’s a federal election coming up here in Australia, so let’s do some public messaging to try and put this issue at the center of people’s agendas.
“As we were developing the messaging, we realized that there were other individuals who were starting to convey the same sorts of ideas.So, maybe these frustrations are starting to reach a bit of a turning point at the moment.And now we’re trying to give those people some ammunition for discussion, and we’re trying to emphasize why latest-generation advanced manufacturing technologies should be central to the conversation.” Image courtesy of SPEE3D.
As much as Australia and the US may differ in terms of their manufacturing landscapes, there are nonetheless many overlaps between the two nations when it comes to why advanced manufacturing needs to be a central part of their industrial revitalization strategies.Perhaps more than any other single reason, the shortage of manufacturing workers — especially when compared to China and nations in Southeast Asia — requires a completely different approach than is appropriate when the objective solely involves maximizing output at the lowest costs possible.Instead, the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, and EU nations must focus primarily on maximizing the value density output per manufacturing worker.
Any strategy for achieving that goal must include, as a central feature, prioritizing development of the most advanced tech in digitalized manufacturing.Among other reasons, the long-term potential for automation is what will enable laggard nations to start to catch up to much more population-dense regions that will always have the edge when it comes to scale: “I think this philosophy of Make Stuff Here makes sense on its own, but let’s apply it specifically to advanced manufacturing,” said Camilleri.“As I’ve pointed out, in Australia, we have raw materials A, B, and C that we need for turning into a given end-product, D, where cheap metals, for instance, are turned into increasingly more valuable alloys, and ultimately into the highest part of the value chain: finished products for, ideally, high-cost industries like automotive, aerospace, semiconductors, etc.
“We’re also a nation of very few people in a very large space, so I think this is also why we’re well-suited for advanced manufacturing.We can do it without needing giant facilities for people in boiler suits carrying hammers, which has never really been our strong-suit.But the design part of manufacturing, the ‘good product’ angle, where we’re fitting an application to a need, we’re actually quite good at that.
“That’s why I think there’s a lot of opportunity to get more people excited about the idea of using advanced manufacturing to solve real problems, and to use those solutions as the foundation for building export industries.” In this context, Camilleri pointed to one area where Australia has already been successful, and it’s an industry where advanced manufacturing seems to always be increasingly indispensable: “There’s a couple of examples of this in our medical tech industry where we’ve done really well, such as cochlear implants for treating deafness, and CPAP machines for treating sleep apnea.For the latter, Resmed is the company that has leveraged this product invented in Australia, so that’s a real, successful business that has been founded on Australian innovation.We decided we wanted to try to solve a problem, we did, and then we created an export market based on that solution.
Advanced manufacturing shows how we take the problem of lacking scale off the table.And it’s exactly why we should be going after it.” I think the best solutions tend to transform disadvantages into advantages, and this is exactly what Camilleri has in mind with Make Stuff Here.Great ideas also quite often represent the middle ground between the personal and the universal, and Camilleri is threading that needle, as well: “I’ve got three daughters, and there’s plenty of reason for pessimism at the moment, so let’s give their generation some good reasons to be optimistic,” said Camilleri.
“Despite all the bad news in the world, we’re generally healthier, wealthier, and safer than people who lived in any era that’s come before us, and technology is opening up new opportunities for younger generations that were never available when I was growing up.There are whole job descriptions, entire fields that don’t exist yet that will inevitably exist five years from now, and that’s the stuff that we’ve got to be preparing our kids for.And I think they get this concept intuitively.
They know that if they acquire broad knowledge, and hone their skills at multiple different things, that’s the best path to success.” What’s most encouraging about Make Stuff Here is it’s nationally-focused without being nationalistic.The message can clearly resonate as much in the US as it does in Australia.“Here” can really be anywhere.
Learning how to make stuff, and how to love making stuff, is the important part.Anyone interested in learning more about Make Stuff Here can reach out in a form at the bottom of this page Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.Print Services Upload your 3D Models and get them printed quickly and efficiently.
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