NADCAP-Accredited Casting Suppliers: AC7000-Series Audits for Pyrometry, NDT, and Heat Treat

NADCAP, the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program, is administered by the Performance Review Institute on behalf of a council of prime contractors such as Boeing, GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, and others. Rather than each prime auditing every supplier's special processes independently, the primes pooled their requirements into consensus audit criteria and a shared accreditation, which the PRI's qualified auditors then administer. A foundry holds NADCAP accreditation per task group, and accreditation is granted against published audit checklists for each process, with merit-based intervals that lengthen for strong performers and shorten after findings. The key conceptual point for a buyer is that NADCAP is process-specific, not company-wide. An AS9100 certificate covers the whole quality system; a NADCAP accreditation covers one defined special process performed to one set of checklists. A casting foundry may carry multiple NADCAP accreditations simultaneously, each with its own scope and expiry, and each visible on the eAuditNet database that PRI maintains. Always read the scope of each accreditation rather than assuming a single NADCAP logo covers everything.

Casting itself has a dedicated task group, and the foundry's accreditation may reference the AC7000-series materials testing laboratory and the casting-specific criteria, but the audits buyers most often need to see surround the casting. Heat treatment falls under the AC7102 checklist within the heat-treating task group, and it audits furnace pyrometry to AMS 2750, the temperature uniformity surveys, instrument calibration, and the system accuracy tests that determine whether a solution treatment or age is actually hitting the metallurgical target. This is frequently the single most scrutinized special process for cast superalloys and aluminum. Nondestructive testing is the other pillar. Fluorescent penetrant inspection and radiography are accredited under the NDT task group checklists (the AC7114-series for the broad NDT program with method-specific supplements), covering the penetrant process line parameters, dwell and emulsification times, lighting and black-light irradiance levels, film or digital radiography technique, image quality indicators, and crucially the qualification and certification of personnel to a written practice based on NAS 410 or SNT-TC-1A. Where castings are weld-upgraded to repair surface defects, the welding task group checklists apply to that operation. A complete picture of a foundry's NADCAP footprint maps each of these processes to its checklist and scope.

If you trace NADCAP findings in a casting operation back to root cause, a large share land on pyrometry. AMS 2750, the pyrometry specification invoked by the AC7102 heat-treat checklist, defines temperature uniformity surveys (TUS), system accuracy tests (SAT), thermocouple types and replacement intervals, instrument calibration, and the furnace classification by uniformity and instrumentation type. For a cast nickel superalloy that must be solution-treated within a narrow window, a furnace that drifts out of its surveyed uniformity can quietly produce parts with the wrong microstructure that pass dimensional inspection and still fail in service. A NADCAP heat-treat audit reads the TUS and SAT records, checks thermocouple usage against the replacement schedule, and verifies the furnace is being run within its accredited classification for the part being processed. For a buyer, the practical diligence is to confirm the foundry's heat-treat accreditation is current in eAuditNet and that the furnaces used for your alloy are within scope and class. AMS 2750 is also why aerospace heat treat carries a cost and lead-time premium: the survey and calibration discipline is real labor, and lapses force requalification before parts can be released.