EWI Lands $13.2M to Build a Quality Assurance System for Metal 3D Printing

The Qualification Bottleneck

Qualifying metal 3D printed parts for aerospace and defense remains one of the biggest barriers to scaling additive manufacturing. Parts that are too large, too dense, or too geometrically complex for traditional inspection methods create a gap that no single current tool can fill reliably.

EWI has won a $13.2M project call from America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining to address that gap. The project, called INSITE, aims to combine in-situ monitoring during printing with post-build inspection into a single certifiable quality assurance framework.

What INSITE Aims to Deliver

The system will unify two halves of quality assurance that currently operate separately. In-situ monitoring watches the print as it happens, catching anomalies in real time. Post-build inspection verifies the final part's dimensions, material properties, and internal structure. Bringing these together into one framework means a part can be qualified from start to finish without stitching together data from disconnected tools.

That matters for aerospace and defense suppliers who need to certify parts to strict standards. Currently, qualification can take longer than production itself, which defeats the speed advantage additive manufacturing promises.

How It Fits the Larger Landscape

In-situ monitoring is already being commercialized on individual platforms. Phase3D offers a Fringe Inspection kit for Colibrium Additive's M2 Series 5, for example. That product addresses a narrower slice of the problem: monitoring on one specific printer model. INSITE aims higher, seeking a cross-platform system that works across machines, materials, and part geometries.

The $13.2M investment reflects how seriously the U.S. defense manufacturing ecosystem takes the qualification problem. America Makes has funded numerous quality assurance projects, but this one is notable for its scope. If INSITE delivers a framework that inspectors and auditors accept, it could shorten the qualification timeline for metal AM from months to weeks.

Why It Matters Now

Aerospace and defense customers are moving from additive manufacturing prototypes to flight-ready hardware. That shift requires evidence that a part printed today will perform the same as one machined from billet, under the same temperature extremes, fatigue loads, and environmental conditions. A unified in-situ and post-build quality system provides that evidence in a format regulators and program managers can trust.

EWI brings experience in welding, materials joining, and nondestructive evaluation to the project. The company has worked with defense and aerospace manufacturers for decades, so it understands the certification requirements those industries demand. Partnering with America Makes and NCDMM gives the project access to a broad network of printer operators, materials suppliers, and end users who will test the system under real production conditions.

The result could be a quality assurance pathway that lets more manufacturers put metal 3D printed parts into service without the current qualification bottleneck. For companies betting on additive manufacturing for low-rate production, spare parts, or tooling, that is a meaningful step toward mainstream adoption.