Nadcap Audits Additive Manufacturing by Process Data, Not Finished Parts
The AC7131 series passed 100 metallic powder bed fusion audits by mid-2026, and unlike conventional audits it inspects upstream process control rather than the part that came out.
Nadcap, administered by the Performance Review Institute, has built a dedicated additive manufacturing audit family under AC7131. AC7131/1 for metallic powder bed fusion was published in April 2025 and became effective on 3 August 2025. AC7131/2 for directed energy deposition followed in June 2025 with first audits in the fourth quarter. AC7131/3, covering laser powder bed fusion for non-metallic materials, is near publication with audits due in late 2026; AC7131/4 for fused filament fabrication has a test audit scheduled in Germany for September 2026; and AC7131/5 for cold spray is expected in early 2027.
Well over 100 metallic powder bed fusion audits had been completed by the middle of 2026, across North America, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and India. Nadcap overall runs roughly 6,140 audits a year across 53 countries, 26 critical process categories and 65 subscribers.
The structural difference is what makes this interesting outside aerospace. Conventional Nadcap audits lean on inspection of the finished part. Additive audits inspect upstream process control instead, because in additive manufacturing the part and the process are made at the same time and a defect buried in layer four hundred is not something a final inspection will find.
That has a direct consequence for anyone connecting machines. An accredited supplier has to show that machine parameters, sensor traces and environmental records are captured, retained and traceable per build. Printer connectivity, historian retention policy and time-synchronised data capture stop being a digital-thread nice-to-have and become audit line items — and, usefully, the audit defines exactly which signals have to survive the journey from the machine to the quality record.
Richard Freeman, principal staff engineer at PRI, presented the framework at the AMAA 2026 event, and Dave Abbott of GE Aerospace chairs the additive manufacturing task group.
Source: 3D Printing Industry