Aerospace Machine Shop Software for AS9100 and AS9102 FAI
Small aerospace suppliers carry the same paperwork load as their much larger competitors: first article inspection reports, material certs traced to the heat lot, certificates of conformance, calibration records, nonconformance logs, and an audit every year. Quality is often a dual-hat job, done by a machinist or the owner after hours. One owner described building their quality system in their free time over two years.
The software that handles this well has historically been priced for bigger shops, and buying it is often treated as the prerequisite to AS9100. Traveler will include its compliance suite in the same $109 a month as everything else, with unlimited users. It is designed to make the paperwork a byproduct of running the job, not a second job.
“Every FAI is an afternoon of retyping data we already have somewhere.”
Traveler is designed to generate AS9102 Forms 1 through 3 from the part, job, and material lot data already in the system. Characteristics can be imported from a ballooned print made in your existing ballooning tool.
“The auditor asks for traceability on one job and it takes half a day to pull the folder together.”
Each job keeps its traveler, mill certs with heat lots, supplier PO, inspection results, FAI, certificate of conformance, and customer acceptance record together. The audit binder export is designed to produce that bundle as one PDF.
“Certs pile up unfiled, and sometimes the parts ship before the certs are even entered.”
Receiving is built to be faster than the shop: confirm the PO line, photograph the mill test report, key the heat number, print lot labels. The cert then joins the job automatically, and trace runs job to lot to cert to supplier PO in two clicks.
“Our gage calibration lives in a spreadsheet somebody forgets to check.”
The gage registry tracks calibration intervals and cert PDFs, sends due-date alerts, and blocks an out-of-calibration gage from being used on an inspection step.
“Every customer wants inspection data formatted differently.”
In-process inspection results are captured at the kiosk or on a phone and exported through per-customer CSV and PDF templates.
What AS9100 asks of a small shop
AS9100 is the quality management system standard used across aviation, space, and defense. It builds on ISO 9001 and adds requirements that matter on the floor: configuration management, first article inspection, control of nonconforming product, counterfeit parts prevention, and traceability. Certification is granted by an accredited registrar after an audit, and surveillance audits follow on a regular cycle.
Software does not make a shop certified. What it can do is keep the evidence an auditor asks for organized and retrievable, so the records exist because the work happened, not because someone reconstructed them the week before the audit.
Two postures: ISO-ready and certified
Not every shop doing aerospace work holds AS9100. Many are suppliers to certified primes and need document control, quality logs, calibration records, and a clean certificate of conformance without carrying a full certification. Traveler's compliance suite has a default ISO-ready posture for that.
Flip it to the certified posture and it adds FAI, the full NCR and corrective action workflow, and the audit binder. A templated quality manual and core procedures oriented to ISO 9001 and AS9100 are part of the plan, versioned and ready to adapt to your shop.
The honest timeline
Traveler is in early access. The quote-to-invoice core, with travelers, material traceability, and certificates of conformance, comes first. The full compliance suite, including FAI forms, the NCR and CAPA workflow, and the gage registry, follows. It is included in the price, not sold as an add-on.
Starting on the core still pays off for an aerospace shop. Material certs captured at receiving, heat lots on every traveler, and certificates of conformance archived per job are the raw material the FAI forms and audit binder are built from, so the history is already there when the compliance suite arrives.
Want this handled without the spreadsheet?
Traveler Cloud is quote-to-invoice for small machine shops at $109/month flat, unlimited users. It's in early access — leave your email and we'll bring you in by wave. No sales calls.
Free, no signup: AS9102 Form 3 / FAI Template →
Straight answers
▸Will Traveler get my shop AS9100 certified?
No software can do that. Certification comes from an accredited registrar's audit of your quality system. Traveler is designed to keep the records that system depends on, such as FAI, traceability, calibration, and nonconformances, organized and easy to produce.
▸Does Traveler do ballooning?
No. Ballooning stays in the dedicated tools built for it. Traveler is designed to import the characteristic list from those tools and build the AS9102 forms around it.
▸Is the compliance suite extra?
No. It's included in the $109 a month Cloud plan and in both Shop Server editions: $4,250 one time, or $6,500 for Shop Server Defense.