NADCAP's Additive Manufacturing Audit Criteria Are Rolling Out in Stages — Here's What's Published and What's Next

NADCAP's push to bring additive manufacturing under the same audit rigor as its other special processes has moved well past the announcement stage. At the AMAA 2026 conference in July, program leadership laid out exactly where each of five planned AM audit criteria — designated AC7131/1 through AC7131/5 — actually stands, and the answer is: further along than a lot of shops watching from the sidelines may realize.

What's already published and being audited. AC7131/1, covering metallic powder bed fusion (PBF), published in April 2025 and became effective August 3, 2025 — NADCAP reports more than 100 PBF audits completed by mid-2026, with accredited suppliers now spread across North America, the UK, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and India. AC7131/2, covering directed energy deposition (laser powder, laser wire, electron beam wire, and gas/plasma wire DED), published in June 2025, with first audits beginning in the fourth quarter of that year.

What's still moving through the pipeline. AC7131/3 (non-metallic laser powder bed fusion) completed a successful test audit in Belgium in March 2026 and is close to publication for late-2026 audits. AC7131/4 (fused filament fabrication) has cleared its technical ballots, with a test audit scheduled for September 2026 in Germany. AC7131/5 (cold spray additive manufacturing) is expected to publish in early 2027.

The approach behind the criteria. NADCAP isn't writing AM specifications from scratch — as the program's own leadership put it at AMAA 2026, the criteria draw their compliance questions out of existing SAE, ISO, ASTM, and AWS specifications rather than inventing new technical requirements. That matters for shops evaluating readiness: the audit criteria are a compliance checklist against standards that likely already govern your process documentation, not a new technical bar to clear from zero.

For shops pursuing or maintaining NADCAP accreditation in additive manufacturing — or any special process — knowing exactly which AC7131 sub-criteria applies to your specific AM process, and confirming your documentation is built against it before an auditor asks, is exactly the kind of preparation Lion NDT's NADCAP Accreditation Support services are built around.