Do You Really Know ASTM as Well as You Think?
Anyone working in additive manufacturing has heard the name ASTM. It appears in procurement documents, supplier qualification checklists, and industry conferences. It is everywhere. Yet very few people can explain precisely what it means. What is ASTM? Why does it exist? And does it actually deliver real benefits to your organization? This article unpacks ASTM from the beginning — for those who thought they already knew.
What Is ASTM, Really?
ASTM stands for American Society for Testing and Materials.
The name itself tells you something important. This organization was born in the United States, and its original purpose was materials testing — not certification in the modern sense. In 2001, it was renamed ASTM International to reflect its growing global reach. The abbreviation ASTM remained, and today the entire world recognizes it by that name.
Headquarters: a small town just outside Philadelphia.
ASTM is a non-profit, non-governmental organization. No single government controls it. No single company funds it. It operates entirely through the voluntary participation of its members.
Why Was ASTM Created?
To understand why ASTM matters, you need to understand the problem it was created to solve.
It is 1898. America is in the middle of a railroad boom. Trains are the backbone of commerce and transport. But there is a serious problem. Steel rails keep breaking.
The cause was not any one company cutting corners. The problem was structural. Steel manufacturers across the country were producing rails to their own internal specifications. Different manufacturers, different methods. Buyers had no common baseline to compare products, and no unified way to verify quality. When a rail broke under heavy load, the consequences were catastrophic.
Charles Dudley, a chemist responsible for quality control at the Pennsylvania Railroad at the time, concluded that inspecting broken rails after the fact would not solve the problem. The solution was to define in advance, in shared terms, what good steel looked like. Dudley made the case for this approach, and scientists and engineers from the railroad industry gathered in Philadelphia to begin developing common standards.
That 1898 gathering became ASTM.
The lesson from that founding moment has not changed. Without shared standards, markets cannot function efficiently, and failure becomes inevitable. To evaluate anything, you need a common baseline for comparison.
From a Railroad Problem to 13,000+ Standards
From that single problem in 1898, ASTM has grown into one of the world’s largest standards organizations.
Today ASTM publishes more than 13,000 technical standards covering materials, products, systems, and services across virtually every industry: construction, textiles, consumer products, medical devices, petroleum, nuclear energy, and manufacturing.
Its membership stands at more than 35,000 people from over 150 countries. Engineers, scientists, researchers, government officials, and industry practitioners volunteer their expertise and develop and maintain standards through a rigorous consensus process.
The process works as follows. Anyone with a legitimate interest can participate. Proposals are debated, tested, and revised. A standard is approved only when broad consensus is reached. This openness is the foundation of ASTM’s credibility — standards reflect the collective judgment of an industry, not the preference of any single company or government.
One more important fact: ASTM standards are voluntary. There is no legal requirement to follow them. This confuses many people, and it is a critical point to understand, because voluntary does not mean optional in practice. That distinction will be explained in detail in Part 2.
ASTM and Additive Manufacturing: Committee F42
Within ASTM’s vast scope, the part that matters to the AM industry is Committee F42 on Additive Manufacturing Technologies. Every AM-related standard originates here.
F42 was established on January 13, 2009. From the start, it drew representatives not only from the United States but from multiple regions including Europe, Asia, and Africa — more than 70 delegates in total. It was designed as a global standardization effort from day one.
F42 focuses specifically on developing standards across every aspect of AM: terminology, processes, materials, design, testing, and file formats. Today it includes more than 800 experts from 40 countries.
In 2011, ASTM F42 signed a cooperation agreement with ISO/TC 261, the ISO technical committee on additive manufacturing. This partnership created a unified global framework for AM standards, published as ISO/ASTM joint standards. The most widely recognized is ISO/ASTM 52900, which defines common terminology across the entire AM field.
Two points are worth understanding clearly here.
First, both ASTM and ISO are organizations that create standards — they do not conduct audits. ASTM and ISO define what the benchmark is. Whether an organization meets that benchmark is determined by third-party certification bodies. Thousands of such bodies exist worldwide, but those performing audits based on ASTM standards are generally required to hold ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. Well-known examples include TÜV SÜD (Germany), SGS (Switzerland), Bureau Veritas (France), and Intertek (UK), all of which operate globally including in Japan.
Second, ISO/ASTM joint standards are developed and published together by both organizations. Passing an audit against one of these standards means you can claim compliance with both ASTM and ISO simultaneously. There is no need to address them separately.
ASTM also carries two distinct roles. The first is creating standards. The second is ensuring those standards are understood and applied across the industry. A standard that nobody uses accomplishes nothing.
In the AM space, these two roles are divided clearly. Committee F42 handles standard development. The AM Center of Excellence (AM CoE), established in 2018, handles research, dissemination, personnel training, and the operation of AM provider qualification programs. Think of F42 as the body that writes the rules, and AM CoE as the body that helps the industry understand and apply them.
The AM Standards Landscape: What F42 Has Produced
Committee F42 has published 72 standards to date, with new ones in continuous development. The following is a selection of the most frequently referenced.
| Standard | Scope |
|---|---|
| ISO/ASTM 52900 | Common terminology for additive manufacturing |
| ISO/ASTM 52901 | Requirements for purchased AM parts |
| ISO/ASTM 52910 | Design guidelines for AM |
| F2924 | Titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) parts via powder bed fusion |
| F3049 | Metal powder characterization |
| F3122 | Mechanical property evaluation for metal AM parts |
Metal-related standards dominate the list. This is not because ASTM only covers metals — it reflects the order in which standards have been developed. ASTM prioritizes AM standards based on the risk level of the application.
Metals are used in aerospace, medical, and defense applications where failure can cost lives. Standardization moved fastest here and remains the most fully developed area.
Polymers have historically been used mainly for prototyping, where rigorous standards were less critical. However, as high-performance resins such as PEEK and ULTEM gain traction in aerospace and medical applications, polymer standards are advancing rapidly.
Composites such as carbon fiber reinforced materials are important in aerospace but remain an area where ASTM standardization is still developing. Multiple standards are currently in progress.
One specific warning is worth noting here. Carbon fiber filled filaments have become widely available in the market. However, “CF-filled” means different things from different manufacturers. There is currently no dedicated standard for CF-filled filaments that defines how much fiber is added or how it is incorporated. As a result, material properties vary significantly between products. Evaluating performance based on the label alone is unreliable. In any area where standards do not yet exist, independent verification and careful evaluation are essential.
Metal powders, by contrast, are well covered. ISO/ASTM 52907 defines the methods for characterizing metal powder feedstock — particle size distribution, chemical composition, morphology, flowability, contamination, and more. Material manufacturers use this standard as the basis for their data sheets, allowing buyers to compare powders from different suppliers against a common benchmark. This is the fundamental difference from CF-filled filaments: whether a shared measurement basis exists determines the reliability of material selection.
Why ASTM Acquired Wohlers Associates (Wohlers Report)
In November 2021, at Formnext — the world’s leading trade show for additive manufacturing — ASTM International announced the acquisition of Wohlers Associates.
First, some context on Wohlers Associates. Founded by Terry Wohlers, Wohlers Associates has published the Wohlers Report annually for more than 30 years. It is the most authoritative market intelligence report in the AM industry. When investors, governments, or executives want to understand the state of the global AM market, the Wohlers Report is what they read. It is, without exaggeration, the industry’s most trusted annual publication.
Standards only work when they reflect the realities of the field. Understanding which technologies are gaining traction, which industries are growing, and what the market will need next is a prerequisite for developing standards that actually work. The Wohlers Report was precisely that source of market intelligence. By acquiring it, ASTM became an organization capable of aligning standard development with market direction in a way no other body can.
Wohlers Associates now operates as Wohlers Associates, powered by ASTM International. Terry Wohlers serves as head of advisory services and market intelligence under the AM CoE.
In Part 2, we answer the biggest question this raises: why a voluntary standard becomes mandatory in practice. We also cover what ASTM certification concretely delivers to your organization, how the need for certification depends on what you actually make, and where Japan and the rest of Asia currently stand.
[Continue to Part 2: Your First Guide to ASTM Certification Part 2: What Certification Delivers]
