Project AMSCALE: Unlocking the door to qualification of additive manufacturing at scale.

Production of Critical Aerospace Components at rates made possible by Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies is being held back by a lack of viable inspection solutions.

Additive manufacturing techniques have introduced a unique range of defects and flaws which, when combined with highly complex designs, present major challenges to all conventional Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques.

Emerging NDT solutions like Theta Technologies’ Nonlinear Resonance are hindered by the unavailability of Representative Quality Indicators (RQIs) in statistically relevant quantities to enable a robust demonstration of their capabilities.

Qualification requires demonstrating not just the capability but also the limitations of the method, normally necessitating the use of unrepresentative, simplistic coupons. To overcome this obstruction to adoption, Theta Technologies has recently developed a rapid, tightly controlled method for creating fine cracks in real AM components.

Theta, in a project partnership with global aerospace manufacturers GKN Aerospace, Leonardo Helicopters, Rolls-Royce and Spirit Aerosystems, AM experts AMS and Apex, and NDT specialists MTC and NPL, will unlock the door to qualification of Additive Manufacturing at Scale by:-

• Developing Theta’s crack-induction method into a turnkey system usable by project partners
• Printing, and inducing cracks into, 450 Aerospace AM parts and then using them to assess the capability of Nonlinear Resonance NDT as a detection solution
• Running multiple complementary NDT studies with Nonlinear Resonance and other advanced NDT techniques

This project is supported by the Aerospace Technology Institute, and will run from November 2025 to July 2027.

Discover the unmatched accuracy and speed of nonlinear resonance NDT with a complementary part test. Let us demonstrate how our innovative part qualification technology can help you identify critical flaws in your bespoke AM components.