Printing a metal part for a launcher or a satellite is often the easy part. Proving that the part is good enough to fly is the hard part. A new European Space Agency project called DIQAM is going after that proof. Hamburg software company amsight announced in an Oct. 9 release, carried by Quality Magazine, that it will lead the project. The goal is to turn qualification of additively manufactured space components from a pile of documents into a reusable digital record. The project was presented on Oct. 14 at the ESA Future Space Transportation Autumn Session 2026 in Paris.

DIQAM stands for Digital Qualification Framework for Additively Manufactured Space Components. It is an ESA FIRST! project that runs for 12 months, starting in September 2026, and it is supported by ESA's Future Space Transportation (FLPP) team. 3D Printing Industry put the ambition in its headline: cutting AM space part qualification down to "one click."

The bottleneck nobody prints their way out of

Additive manufacturing can produce lighter, more efficient and more complex components for launchers and propulsion systems. Qualification has not kept up. VoxelMatters, reporting on the selection, describes AM qualification as still slow and document-heavy. It relies on CT scans, companion specimens and manual assembly of evidence.

That last item is the one that matters here. The evidence that a printed part is sound is typically scattered. It includes process data from the build, material and powder records, post-processing records, CT inspection results and test results. Someone has to gather all of that, check it against a specification and package it for the customer. According to 3D Printing Industry, the process is repeated rather than reused from one build to the next. The next part, or the next customer, starts the whole process again.

Lukas Werling, CEO and co-founder of InSpacePropulsion Technologies (ISPTech), describes the problem from the buyer's side. According to 3D Printing Industry, ISPTech currently checks the quality of AM parts from its suppliers by hand. Werling says relevant information is "often buried in extensive PDF reports," and that it is nearly impossible to compare data consistently across different suppliers and sources. If you have ever tried to pull one number out of a scanned test certificate, you know the problem.

What DIQAM actually builds

At its core, the project is a Digital Qualification Evidence Framework. According to the amsight release, the framework links six kinds of data into one chain:

  • process data from the build
  • material and powder information
  • machine and sensor data
  • post-processing records
  • CT inspection results
  • mechanical test evidence

The aim is to make this chain reusable, not to rebuild it from scratch for every qualification campaign. The project has three planned outputs. The first is a space-specific reference specification. The second is a Digital Part Qualification File. The third is a software prototype. VoxelMatters reports that the prototype covers data ingestion, evidence aggregation and statistical evaluation, and the amsight release says this happens across the AM supply chain. In plain terms, it pulls in the data, aggregates the evidence and runs statistical evaluations on it.

The Digital Part Qualification File is arguably the most important of the three. A qualification package made of PDFs can be read by a person but is hard for software to check. A structured, machine-readable record that keeps the links between each piece of evidence and the part it supports is easier to search, compare and reuse. That is the model the amsight release describes: quality evidence that is structured, machine-readable and useful for statistical process control. ESA systems engineer Daniel Chipping made the reuse point, as quoted in the release and by 3D Printing Industry. He said the framework can systematically reuse qualification data, reduce redundant inspection and testing, and accelerate certification. Reuse is where the savings would come from: data collected once would not have to be gathered and re-verified every time the same process produces another part.

APWORKS CTO Andreas Funcke put a number on today's pain. According to the release, compiling and interpreting all the quality evidence for a single part can currently take several hours. "With DIQAM, we aim to reduce this effort to just one click," he said. That is a stated aim, not a measured result.

Who is involved, and what they're testing on

amsight, which makes quality-management software for additive manufacturing, leads the consortium. According to 3D Printing Industry, the other members are ArianeGroup, ISPTech, APWORKS, Bimo Tech and Fraunhofer IAPT. The release describes the group as bringing together software, launcher, propulsion, manufacturing, materials and research expertise.

The framework will be validated on two industrial demonstrators. ArianeGroup is contributing a Phase Change Material container for Ariane 6. ISPTech is contributing a 4U propellant tank that forms the core of its CubeSat propulsion system. According to 3D Printing Industry, the 3D printed tank is engineered to withstand high operating pressures while fitting inside standard CubeSat satellite structures. The two parts sit at opposite ends of the space-hardware market: one is a component for the Ariane 6 launcher, the other is propulsion hardware for small satellites. If one evidence framework can handle both, that suggests it could apply more broadly than a single program's paperwork, though that is an inference, not something the sources claim.

What It Means for Makers

Very few FilamentFeed readers will qualify a propellant tank for orbit. But the problem DIQAM tackles is the same one the consortium says exists across regulated AM production: scattered evidence, manual reporting, repeated qualification effort and limited reuse of quality knowledge. As 3D Printing Industry puts it, the bottleneck is no longer printing the part but proving it.

The project's approach holds a lesson at every scale: treat print data as evidence, not exhaust. Machine logs, material lot numbers, post-processing steps and inspection results are only useful for qualification if they are captured, kept and linked to the part they describe. Amsight's Peter Lindecke, CCO, said the lesson applies to every manufacturer trying to move AM from capable to dependable production. A small shop selling functional printed parts already faces a smaller version of the same question whenever a customer asks how it knows a batch is good.

There are also caveats. DIQAM is a 12-month project that started in September, and its stated outputs are a reference specification, a file format and a software prototype, not a certified, production-ready qualification route. The "one click" framing describes an aspiration. Whether the framework catches on will depend on whether the space primes, suppliers and agencies that have to trust the digital file actually adopt it. The sources describe the project's plans, not results.

Bottom Line

DIQAM attacks one of additive manufacturing's least glamorous and most stubborn problems: the manual, document-bound work of proving a printed part is fit for service. With ArianeGroup and ISPTech supplying flight-relevant demonstrators and ESA's Future Space Transportation team supporting it, the project is worth following through its 12-month run. If it produces a qualification file that others can reuse, the benefit could reach well beyond space hardware.

Sources