ASTM publishes strategic guide for certifying AM parts in defense
Developed with the UK Ministry of Defence under Project TAMPA, the guide offers a criticality-based approach to certification across air, land and maritime domains
ASTM International’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) has published a Strategic Guide to Certification of Additively Manufactured Parts in Defence Applications, developed jointly with the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) through its Project TAMPA additive manufacturing accelerator. The document is available for free download through the AM CoE’s website.
The guide offers defense organizations, manufacturers and suppliers a common, criticality-based method for qualifying additively manufactured parts across air, land and maritime domains. It addresses a longstanding barrier to adoption: certification expectations for AM parts have differed from one design authority and prime contractor to the next, a gap affecting defense supply chains internationally.
Rather than prescribing new requirements, the guide consolidates existing expectations into a single, technology-neutral reference that ties certification evidence to the consequence of a part’s failure in service.
A four-tier classification system
The guide sets a four-tier part classification, Class A through D, linking the certification evidence expected to a part’s safety criticality. It outlines two certification pathways, one centered on process qualification and the other on testing, so suppliers can follow an approach proportional to a part’s criticality.
Evidence expectations span core certification activities, including feedstock control, machine and process qualification, and product verification and non-destructive evaluation. The framework applies across AM processes and material families and supports earlier engagement among manufacturers, design organizations and certifying authorities to reduce uncertainty in qualification.
“Additive manufacturing earns a place in defense only when a part can be trusted in service, and that trust depends on qualification and certification that hold up consistently across organizations, domains, and borders,” said Mohsen Seifi, Ph.D., Vice President of Global Advanced Manufacturing at ASTM International.
“This guide gives manufacturers and authorities across the global defense community a shared, criticality-based reference point.”
Built for use beyond the UK
Project TAMPA identified inconsistent part certification as a central barrier to scaling AM across defense, findings that helped shape the UK’s first Defence Advanced Manufacturing Strategy and a vision for certified AM production shared with allies through the United States, AUKUS and NATO.
Though the MOD funded the work, ASTM wrote the guide to be nation- and technology-agnostic, allowing defense manufacturers and allied supply chains beyond the UK to apply the same method.
The guide represents pre-standardization work; concepts that advance toward formal standards would move through ASTM’s consensus-based process separately.
