en.Wedoany.com Reported - The ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE), in collaboration with the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) through the Project TAMPA Additive Manufacturing Accelerator, has jointly released the "Strategic Guidance for Certification of Additive Manufacturing Parts for Defense Applications."
This guidance provides a common, criticality-based approach for defense organizations, manufacturers, and suppliers to qualify additive manufacturing parts across land, sea, and air domains. It aims to address a long-standing barrier to adoption: differing expectations for certification of additive manufacturing parts among various design agencies and prime contractors, a gap that impacts international defense supply chains.
The guidance does not prescribe new requirements but consolidates existing expectations into a single, technology-neutral reference, linking certification evidence to the consequences of part failure in service. It establishes a four-level part classification (A to D), tying expected certification evidence to the safety criticality of the part. It outlines two certification pathways—one focused on process qualification and the other on testing—enabling suppliers to adopt an approach commensurate with part criticality. Evidence expectations cover core certification activities, including raw material control, machine and process qualification, product verification, and non-destructive evaluation. The framework applies to all additive manufacturing processes and material families and supports earlier engagement among manufacturers, design agencies, and certification bodies to reduce uncertainty in qualification.
"Additive manufacturing will earn its place in defense only when parts are trustworthy in service, and that trust depends on qualification and certification that are consistent across organizations, domains, and countries," said Dr. Mohsen Seifi, Ph.D., Vice President of Global Advanced Manufacturing at ASTM International. "This guidance provides a shared, criticality-based reference point for manufacturers and authorities in the global defense community."
Project TAMPA identified inconsistent part certification as a core barrier to the adoption of additive manufacturing in defense. Its findings helped shape the UK's first Defense Advanced Manufacturing Strategy, as well as a vision for certified additive manufacturing production shared with allies through the United States, AUKUS, and NATO. Although the work was funded by the UK MOD, the ASTM-developed guidance is not country- or technology-specific, allowing defense manufacturers outside the UK and allied supply chains to apply the same approach. This guidance represents pre-standardization work; should the concepts advance to formal standards, they will be developed separately through ASTM's consensus-based process.
