ASTM Releases Defence Certification Guide for 3D Printed Parts

ASTM International's Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) has released a free guide aimed at qualifying and certifying 3D printed components for the defence sector. The "Strategic Guide to Certification of Additively Manufactured Parts in Defence Applications" was developed with funding from the UK's Ministry of Defence (MOD) and Project TAMPA.

While developed to support UK defence initiatives, the guide is intended to serve as a technology-agnostic, criticality-based reference for qualifying additively manufactured parts across allied defence supply chains globally. This aims to build trust in the reliability of 3D printed parts in service, ensuring consistent certification standards across different organizations, domains, and borders.

The guide functions as a signposting resource, outlining a four-tier part classification system. This system links the required certification evidence to a part's safety criticality. It also proposes two distinct courses of action for certification, one focusing on process qualification and the other on testing. The document addresses evidence expectations for key certification activities, including feedstock control, machine and process qualification, and product verification, including non-destructive evaluation.

Project TAMPA, an AM accelerator program for the UK MOD, identified inconsistent part certification as a significant obstacle to scaling additive manufacturing in defence. This new guide seeks to consolidate certification expectations for AM parts into a single reference point. It emphasizes tying the level of required certification evidence to the potential consequences of a part's failure, rather than imposing new requirements. ASTM notes that this guide represents pre-standardization work, and any concepts moving towards formal standardization would follow ASTM's established consensus-based process.