Answer extracted from the Inspiring Industry Podcast — listen to the full episode below.
What is SPEE3D's unique market positioning within the broader 3D printing industry?
SPEE3D deliberately rejected the metal 3D printing industry's obsession with precision and complexity to target an entirely different market: fast, low-cost commodity parts that traditional manufacturing couldn't serve efficiently. Rather than pursuing absolute perfection, the company chose to push speed and affordability—a strategic pivot that created a completely new market segment in additive manufacturing.
Speed and cost over precision: a different game
The conventional metal 3D printing industry had spent years optimizing for slow, extremely precise, or highly complex parts—the assumption being that additive manufacturing's value lay in geometric perfection. Kennedy and his team saw the problem differently. As explained in the episode, the team discovered technology originally developed by the US military that offered a radically different path: manufacturing parts 100 to 1,000 times faster than conventional metal 3D printing, at a fraction of the cost.
This wasn't about competing in the same market. SPEE3D deliberately chose to move the industry into an entirely different space. Kennedy emphasizes that 3D printing, like any manufacturing tool, has distinct advantages and disadvantages—and the key is understanding which technology solves which problem best. For SPEE3D, that meant targeting applications where speed and economics mattered far more than micron-level precision.
The manufacturing constraint problem: where speed becomes profit
The real-world problem SPEE3D solves is tangible and costly. Consider a mining operation where a critical part fails and cannot be sourced locally: downtime can cost $1 million per day. In such scenarios, the ability to manufacture a replacement part on-site in hours—rather than waiting weeks for traditional manufacturing or paying for emergency logistics—fundamentally changes the economics of operations.
This positioning explains why 80% of SPEE3D's current business comes from the defense sector, where rapid parts replacement in the field is mission-critical. The Australian Army's interest in deploying the technology operationally, beginning around 2019, validated that this market positioning addressed a genuine, high-value need that traditional additive manufacturing had overlooked.
"You can eliminate that mould. You don't need that mould. And suddenly you don't need a big factory and you don't need a lot of capital intensive equipment to be able to manufacture parts anymore."
Byron Kennedy — Co-founder of SPEE3D. Kennedy and his co-founder Steve Committery spent 10 years in manufacturing before recognizing in 2015–2016 that US military technology offered a faster, lower-cost path to parts manufacturing. They built SPEE3D to push that insight into a scalable business serving defense forces and heavy industry globally.
The discovery that eliminating tooling allows manufacturing to happen anywhere without large factories reframes what 3D printing can do. For SPEE3D, this isn't just a technical advantage—it's the core of a market positioning that makes traditional manufacturing assumptions irrelevant.
See also
How has SPEE3D deployed its technology with defense forces globally?
Starting around 2019, the Australian Army approached SPEE3D to deploy the four-ton printer in the field. After testing and refinements, systems have since expanded across multiple defense forces, with 7 systems currently operating in Ukraine and 5 defense forces globally now working with the technology.
What are the speed advantages of SPEE3D's technology compared to other metal 3D printing technologies?
SPEE3D is typically between 100 to 1,000 times faster than other metal 3D printing technologies. At those speeds, the technology can compete with traditional manufacturing methods while delivering the flexibility of additive production.
How did SPEE3D develop its metal 3D printing technology and what problem was it designed to solve?
Byron Kennedy and Steve Committery developed SPEE3D around 2015–2016 after encountering US military technology designed for rapid field repair. They recognized an opportunity to create a faster, lower-cost alternative to traditional precision-focused metal 3D printing for commodity parts.