What is AS9102 Form 3?
Short answer
AS9102 Form 3, Characteristic Accountability, is the form in a First Article Inspection (FAI) report that records every design characteristic of a part: the balloon number, the specification and tolerance, the measured result, the pass/fail determination, the inspection method and the gage ID. It is what ties each measurement back to a specific ballooned feature on the engineering drawing.
Form 3 is the largest and slowest part of a FAIR package. Form 1 is a header. Form 2 is a list. Form 3 is one row per characteristic — and a single aerospace bracket can carry 85 to 150 ballooned characteristics before you count the nonconformance documentation.
Form 1 vs Form 2 vs Form 3
| Form | Title | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Form 1 | Part Number Accountability | Part number, part name, drawing revision, serial/lot, organisation, the FAI itself and whether it is full or partial. Also identifies the person who performed the inspection. |
| Form 2 | Product Accountability — Raw Material, Specifications and Special Processes | Raw material, material specifications, special processes (heat treat, plating, NDT), supplier codes, cert numbers and the traceability chain. |
| Form 3 | Characteristic Accountability | Every ballooned design characteristic with its specification, tolerance, measured result, pass/fail determination, inspection method and gage ID. |
AS9102 Form 3 fields, field by field
| Field | Typical content | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Characteristic number | 1, 2, 3… |
The balloon number. This is the join key back to the drawing; without it a measurement is unverifiable. |
| Reference location | Drawing zone, sheet | Where on the drawing to find the feature. |
| Characteristic designation | Key, Critical, Major, Minor | Key and Critical characteristics are subject to stricter control and often 100 % verification. |
| Specification / requirement | Ø12.000, Flatness |
The nominal or the requirement as written on the drawing. |
| Tolerance | +0.050 / -0.050 |
May be bilateral, unilateral or asymmetrical. Upper and lower limits are derived from nominal and tolerance. |
| Measured result | 12.013 |
The actual value from the inspection, or from a CMM report. |
| Pass / Fail determination | Pass, Fail |
Whether the measured value falls inside the specification limits. |
| Inspection method / tooling | CMM, micrometer, caliper, gauge | How the value was obtained. Matters when a customer challenges a measurement. |
| Gage ID | MC-0142 |
Links to calibration records and to the Measurement Systems Analysis study that PPAP Element 8 requires. |
| Nonconformance / NC code | NC-02, Critical / Major / Minor |
Classification of a failed characteristic, and the escalation path it triggers. |
| Disposition | Accept, Rework, Scrap, Use-As-Is | What happened to the nonconforming feature. Use-As-Is requires customer deviation. |
| Inspector / authority | Name or initials | ISO 9001:2015 clause 8.6 requires the report to identify the authority responsible for release. |
Why a single number is meaningless on its own
This is the part that makes Form 3 harder to digitise than an invoice. An invoice line is a self-contained value: find the number, copy the number. A dimensional measurement is a relational value.
- Reading: 1.2503″
- Meaningless by itself.
- Nominal: 1.2500″
- Now you know the target.
- Tolerance: ±0.0005″
- So the upper limit is 1.2505″ and the lower limit is 1.2495″.
- Conclusion
- The reading is in tolerance. A reading of 1.2506″ on the next part would be out of tolerance and would require an NC code.
Template-based OCR fails here because it treats each field as an isolated box and discards exactly the relationships that give the measurement its compliance value. That is why a converter has to understand which number is the nominal, which is the tolerance band and which is the actual reading — not merely read characters off a page.
AS9102 vs GJB 908
If you are working in the Chinese aerospace supply chain you will meet two similar-sounding documents. They are not interchangeable, and they use different form templates.
| SAE AS9102 | GJB 908 | |
|---|---|---|
| English term | First Article Inspection (FAI) | First Article Qualification |
| Applies to | Civil aviation, international collaboration programmes, aerospace and defence organisations on an AS9100-based QMS | Chinese domestic military programmes |
| Form templates | Three: Part Number Accountability, Product Accountability, Characteristic Accountability | Four, including a production process route card and a qualification review report |
| Determination | Complete / Not complete | Qualified / Not qualified |
In practice many organisations in China run both systems side by side, and a supplier serving a civil customer may be required to submit an AS9102 report even though its own internal route card follows GJB 908. This tool implements AS9102 only.
How to get Form 3 into Excel
- Retype it. Reliable, and the reason the task consumes hours per report.
- Paste the table. Copy the Form 3 table out of the PDF and paste it into a parser. Fast, but you still have to clean the columns.
- Use a converter. Drop the PDF in and get a 15-column spreadsheet with per-row source traceability. This is what AS9102 to Excel does.
Related
- Convert an AS9102 Form 3 to Excel — the converter
- Product details and limitations — what it does and does not do
- Pricing — free tier and one-time options