NASA's Efforts for the Development of Standards for Additive Manufactured Components

The current version of NASA standards for manned spaceflight hardware does not contain sufficient detail for the certification of additively manufactured components. The development of additive manufactured standards is currently in work by several standards organizations. NASA, however, cannot wait on these organizations to develop such standards. NASA and its program partners in manned spaceflight (i.e., Commercial Crew, Space Launch System, and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle) are actively developing additively manufactured components for flight as early as 2019. NASA has formed a team to explore the creation of an agency specification for additive manufactured (AM) components. This team includes representatives from nine NASA centers along with representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration, Air Force, and Army. The team concluded that the best way forward would be to create three standards. One each for crewed space flight, non-crewed space flight, and aeronautics. Each standard will be based on the principles of recently released Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Technical Standard MSFC-STD-3716, Standard for Additively Manufactured Spaceflight Hardware by Laser Powder Bed Fusion in Metals. The team agreed that the standard would be written for mature AM technologies and agreed on which families of materials would and would not be applicable. The team developed the structure of the standards and associated standards and created a three-tiered classification system. A matrix was developed that will aid in the creation of tailoring strategies for the various classifications and applications.