NEW YORK – Additive manufacturing is changing how the world builds things – from heart valves to jet engine components. Standards are what allow this innovation to move from prototype to production safely and at scale. A new report released Wednesday takes stock of where those standards stand and what’s next.
America Makes, based in Youngstown, Ohio, and the American National Standards Institute published the April 2026 Gaps Progress Report from the Additive Manufacturing Standardization Collaborative, which they jointly lead.
The report provides new updates on 35 of the 141 standardization gaps identified in the AMSC’s 2023 Standardization Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing, Version 3.0, a document developed with input from approximately 300 experts across federal agencies, national laboratories, standards developing organizations, industry and academia.
For additive manufacturing to scale across industries – aerospace, medical devices, automotive, defense – manufacturers, regulators and customers need confidence that parts produced by different companies, on different machines, will perform consistently and safely, a news release announcing the release of the report states. Standards make that confidence possible.
The April 2026 report offers a current snapshot of standards development, research and conformity assessment activities across the full additive manufacturing lifecycle, including design, materials, process control, post-processing, qualification and certification, nondestructive evaluation and data. No new gaps were identified in the update.
Rather than a consensus standard, the progress report functions as a living document. It will be updated and republished periodically as standards work advances – until the AMSC takes on the next version of its roadmap.
The AMSC is a cross-sector coordinating body that accelerates the development of industry-wide additive manufacturing standards and specifications, working to align efforts across stakeholders so the additive manufacturing industry can grow.