October 23, 2026 · Procurement Guide
A connector buyer is usually handed three documents and told they mean the same thing: a qualification test report, a first article inspection report, and a certificate of conformance. They answer three completely different questions, and only one of them is about the parts in the carton.
Qualification is evidence about a design family. It says a representative sample of a series, built to a specification, survived a defined set of severities — vibration, thermal cycling, salt fog, altitude dielectric. It does not name your part number, your finish letter, or the tool that cut your shell.
First article inspection is evidence about one configuration built by the production process. It says: on this date, at this facility, using this drawing revision, this tooling and this process, the first article of part number X was measured against every requirement on the drawing and met them.
Receiving inspection is evidence about this lot. It samples, it does not measure everything, and its whole premise is that the configuration it is sampling is the configuration the FAI already proved.
| Evidence | Question it answers | Applies to | Lifetime | Typical sample |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualification test report | Does this design family meet its product specification? | A series or slash sheet, not your part number | Until the specification or design changes; periodic requalification per contract | Small sample, often destructive |
| AS9102 FAI report | Was this configuration, built by the production process, conforming at the first article? | One part number at one revision | Until a trigger invalidates it | One article or a stated number, 100 % of characteristics |
| Pilot / first production lot | Does a real lot, at rate, hold the FAI result? | The lot | That lot only | Lot acceptance sample |
| Receiving inspection | Does the delivered lot match the proved configuration? | The lot | That lot only | AQL sample, not 100 % |
The practical consequence: a supplier who sends a qualification report when you asked for an FAI has sent the wrong document, and a supplier with no FAI has no evidence that the finish letter, keying letter or insert arrangement you ordered has ever been built. Those letters are part of the part number. A different letter is a different part.
AS9102 is the aerospace standard for first article inspection, flowed down through AS9100 contracts. Its structure is deliberately boring: three forms, one part number, the production process, records retained as the contract requires. The current revision is AS9102C; the A (2004) and B (2014) editions are still quoted in older contracts, and the form content and the treatment of partial and delta FAI were clarified between revisions. Confirm the revision your customer requires before you build the package — a package built to the wrong revision is rejected on format, not on quality.
Four properties of the standard decide most arguments:
The single rule behind all three: every design characteristic of the configuration must be covered by a current, referenced FAI. The three scopes are just different ways of satisfying that rule without remeasuring a part you already proved.
| Type | When it is used | What is measured | What it must reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full FAI | A new part number, a new manufacturing source, or a first article for a configuration never built before | Every characteristic of every detail part, sub-assembly and the top-level assembly | Nothing — this is the baseline |
| Partial FAI | A defined subset is in scope, because the remainder is already covered by a current FAI (a sub-assembly proved separately, a characteristic unaffected by the work being done) | The stated subset, with each exclusion justified in writing | The FAI report or reports that cover the excluded characteristics |
| Delta FAI | A change after the baseline: drawing revision, process, tooling, location or a production lapse | Only the characteristics the change affects — plus any characteristic whose interface or fit could be affected by it | The baseline FAI report number and the revision it was built to |
Two failure modes recur. The first is a partial FAI presented as a full one: the cover sheet says full, the Form 3 has 40 rows for a part with 140 drawing characteristics, and no exclusion is documented. The second is a delta FAI with no baseline — a change was made, the affected rows were measured, but nothing ties the package to the report it is a delta of, so a reader cannot reconstruct what is now covered and what is not.
An FAI is not a one-time event at the start of a programme. It is re-established whenever the thing that was proved stops being the thing that is being made.
| Trigger | Scope usually required | What people get wrong |
|---|---|---|
| New part number or new manufacturing source | Full | Treating a second site as “the same company” and skipping the location trigger |
| Drawing or specification revision affecting a characteristic | Delta on the affected characteristics | Building to the superseded revision because the shop copy was not updated |
| Change of process or method — plating line, heat treat, passivation, crimp tooling, moulding | Delta, often full for the finish characteristics | Missing it entirely, because no drawing changed |
| Change of manufacturing location, including a moved line inside the same plant | Delta or full per contract | Assuming a building move is administrative |
| Tooling change, replacement or refurbishment | Delta on the characteristics that tool produces | The refurbishment case — a re-ground insert is a new tool |
| NC program change, or translation to another programming media | Delta on the machined characteristics | Post-processor changes that alter a tool path by microns |
| Production lapse (commonly two years with no order) | Full, or per contract | Restarting on an FAI that predates the lapse |
| Customer-directed FAI after a systemic nonconformance | As directed | Scoping it as a corrective-action report instead |
The two that get missed on connector lines are plating sub-tier changes and tooling refurbishment. Neither leaves a mark on the drawing. Both change the part. If your purchase order does not require notification of either, you will find out at receiving inspection — or you will not find out at all.
Form 1 is the index. It lists the part number under inspection, the drawing revision, the organisation and site, the FAI report number, the reason for the FAI, and then — this is the part that gets skimmed — every detail part, sub-assembly, material and specification that makes up the configuration, each with its own part number and, where applicable, its own FAI reference.
For a circular connector, that tree normally has to name at least: the shell and body, the insulator or insert, the contact system by size and type, the interfacial seal, the grommet or rear seal, the coupling ring and its detent or ratchet hardware, the backshell or adapter if supplied assembled, and the marking specification. A Form 1 that carries only the top-level part number and the words “see drawing” is not an index — it is a title page, and it makes every downstream form unverifiable.
The other Form 1 trap is configuration drift. A MIL-DTL-38999-style part number encodes shell size, insert arrangement, contact style, keying letter and finish class. Change the finish letter and you have a different part number: it needs its own Form 1, its own Form 2 plating evidence and its own Form 3 finish rows. A finish change is not a delta FAI on the shared dimensions — it is a new configuration whose finish is entirely unproven until it is measured.
Form 2 is where a connector package lives or dies, because a connector is mostly a set of material and process callouts held together by a shell. Each row names the item, the specification it was bought to, the supplier and site that processed it, the certificate reference, and the acceptance result.
| Item | What the certificate must state | How the package fails without it |
|---|---|---|
| Shell alloy and temper | Alloy and condition to the drawing callout, with heat or lot identification | Strength and thread durability rest on the temper, not on the alloy name alone |
| Contact base metal and plating | Base alloy, underplate and gold thickness with the measurement method (XRF, coulometric, cross-section) | Contact resistance and mating life are a plating-thickness function; “gold plated” is not a value |
| Shell finish | Finish specification, type and class, thickness, and the acceptance test (adhesion, salt-spray basis) | A finish substitution is invisible to dimensional inspection and is the most common unannounced change |
| Elastomer seals | Material specification, class, durometer, cure or lot date | Sealing and compression set are the ageing failure path; a different compound reads identically on a drawing |
| Plating, anodise or passivation sub-tier | Processor name and site, process specification, chemical-processing accreditation where the contract requires it, and the results for this lot | A certificate from a sister plant, or a generic “meets specification”, breaks the chain between the proved process and the delivered part |
| Heat treat, where applicable | Specification, cycle, hardness results, processor | Temper and hardness are process outputs, not purchasable properties |
The question to ask of every Form 2 row is not “is there a certificate?” but “does this certificate belong to this lot, from this site, to this revision of the process specification?” A certificate that answers a different question is worse than a missing one, because it closes the query.
Form 3 is the measurement record, and it is the form an auditor reads first. Each row carries a characteristic identifier that ties back to a ballooned drawing, the requirement with its nominal and tolerance, the measured result, the instrument or gauge used, whether designed tooling was used, and a pass/fail or nonconformance reference.
For connectors, the characteristic families that must appear are consistent across product lines even though the numbers differ:
| Family | Typical characteristics | How it is verified | What the result column must show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dimensional — shell | Shell and flange dimensions, mounting-hole pattern, key and keyway position, coupling and accessory threads with class of fit | CMM, micrometers, thread gauges, hard gauges | Actual measured values plus gauge identification |
| Dimensional — insert | Contact cavity diameter and position, cavity spacing, insert seating depth, polarising key position | CMM, pin gauges, dedicated cavity gauges | Per-cavity data, not a single representative figure |
| Contact system | Contact dimensions, crimp-barrel size, contact engagement and seating depth, retention force | Dimensional gauging; retention pull test on separate samples | Measured force against the slash-sheet minimum |
| Mechanical function | Mating and unmating torque, coupling torque envelope, anti-decoupling detent or ratchet function, keying engagement | Calibrated torque transducer, functional mating with the mating half | Values against the published envelope, plus the instrument |
| Electrical | Low-level contact resistance, insulation resistance, dielectric withstanding voltage, shell-to-shell resistance | Four-wire milliohm measurement, megohmmeter at the specified test voltage, hipot set | Value, test conditions, and the method reference |
| Sealing | Immersion or pressure decay in the mated configuration; air-leak rate for hermetic variants | Immersion rig, pressure-decay instrument, helium leak detector | The condition tested: mated or unmated, depth and duration, or leak rate |
| Finish | Plating thickness, adhesion, appearance, and the corrosion basis the class claims | XRF or coulometric on coupons or witness samples; cross-section for adhesion disputes | Thickness by location, with the measurement method named |
| Identity and marking | Part number, manufacturer symbol, date or lot code, marking method and legibility | Visual at the specified magnification, adhesion or permanence check | The text as marked, the method, and the inspection result |
The most common Form 3 defect is not a wrong number — it is a row that is not a measurement. “Certified”, “conforms”, “per specification” and “verified by inspection” are not results. A second common defect is a note that never becomes a row: torque values, marking requirements, plating adhesion and insert-arrangement contact population all live in drawing notes and specification callouts, and notes are precisely what a form-filling exercise skips.
Ballooning is the discipline that makes Form 3 auditable: every requirement on the drawing gets a unique number, placed next to it on a copy of the drawing, and every Form 3 row cites that number in its reference-location column. The ballooned drawing travels with the report. Anyone can then pick a row at random and find the requirement it came from, which is exactly what an auditor or a customer’s source inspector does.
Three practical rules:
Model-based definition changes the mechanics, not the rule. Where the definition is a model carrying product manufacturing information, the reference-location column carries the annotation identifier, or the view and direction of the annotation, instead of a paper balloon. The traceability requirement is identical: one identifier per requirement, one measured result per identifier. What does not change is authority — if the drawing is the definition of record, a nominal pulled from model geometry is not an acceptance authority unless the contract says the model governs.
An FAI performed on hand-built samples proves that a skilled technician can make a good connector. That is not the question anyone is asking.
The article must come from production tooling, the production NC program, the production process specification and the production operators, at a representative rate. Where a characteristic can only be verified destructively — plating adhesion by cross-section, retention force by pull test, seal integrity by sectioning — the destructive checks are run on separate samples from the same process and lot, and the FAI article itself is kept deliverable unless the contract permits otherwise.
This is where connector packages most often quietly fail. A crimped contact is a process output: the crimp height, the tool, the die setting and the operator’s technique all sit inside the result, and none of them appear on a drawing. A hand-crimped sample made with a bench tool, presented as the first article for a line that will run an automatic crimper, has verified a process that will never be used again.
| # | Failure | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wrong configuration | Package built for the base part number; the ordered finish or keying letter is not the one measured |
| 2 | Superseded revision | Form 1 names a drawing revision older than the one on the purchase order |
| 3 | Rows that are not measurements | “Conforms”, “certified”, “per spec” in the result column |
| 4 | Notes not ballooned | Torque, marking, adhesion and contact population never appear as rows |
| 5 | No instrument traceability | Values with no gauge or instrument identification and no calibration reference |
| 6 | Sub-tier break | Plating certificate from a different site, or a generic statement with no lot and no thickness data |
| 7 | Similarity claims | Characteristics “verified by similarity to a previous article” with no written justification |
| 8 | Delta with no baseline | The change was measured, but nothing references the report it amends |
| 9 | Prototype article | Hand-built units, bench tooling, non-production crimp or moulding process |
| 10 | Unapproved package | No signature, no approval authority, no revision index, and nonconformances with no disposition reference |
Item 10 deserves a note. A package that contains a nonconformance is not automatically a failed package — real first articles sometimes produce a deviation that is dispositioned as use-as-is or repair by the responsible authority and accepted by the customer. What fails is a package where the nonconformance exists and the disposition is invisible, because then the reader cannot tell whether the article conforms or was forgiven.
Buyers moving between aerospace and automotive programmes routinely use the words interchangeably. They are different systems with different artefacts and different questions.
| System | Origin | Deliverable | What it approves |
|---|---|---|---|
| AS9102 FAI | Aerospace, flowed down through AS9100 | Three forms plus a ballooned drawing and supporting certificates | The first article of a configuration, built by the production process |
| PPAP | Automotive (AIAG) | A submission package including process flow, PFMEA, control plan, measurement system analysis, dimensional results, material and performance tests, and a part submission warrant, at one of several submission levels | The production process, including whether it is capable of holding tolerance at rate |
| Qualification | Product specification, for example a MIL-DTL slash sheet | Qualification test report, and where applicable a listing on the qualified products list | The design family against its specification severities |
| Receiving inspection | Purchase order and quality plan | Inspection record against an AQL plan | The delivered lot |
Two practical differences matter. PPAP is built around capability: it asks whether the process can hold the tolerance, usually evidenced by capability indices and a control plan, and initial submissions commonly target a higher capability index than ongoing production. AS9102 is built around conformance of the article: it asks whether the requirement was met, and a single conforming article with no capability data can still be a complete FAI. If you are buying a connector for an automotive or energy-storage programme, expect PPAP language; if you are buying for an aerospace or defence programme, expect AS9102. A supplier asked for “PPAP” by an aerospace buyer should clarify which artefact is actually wanted rather than shipping a warrant in place of three forms.
An FAI is cheap when it is specified before the order and expensive when it is discovered afterwards. Ten lines that prevent most of the argument:
Airoadcon builds to print across the military circular families most often specified with an AS9102 requirement — J599 Series III equivalents of MIL-DTL-38999, ZH83723 bayonet and threaded variants, MIL-DTL-26500-class aerospace circulars, and M85049 accessory and backshell ranges, alongside the wider circular connector and US military standard catalogue.
For a new configuration, the documentation set is the one described above: a three-form FAI with a ballooned drawing, material and special-process certificates naming the processor and site, plating thickness results, and the electrical and mechanical test data measured to the drawing’s own limits. The acceptance basis published on our quality page is the basis our FAI data is recorded against, so a QA engineer can compare the two documents directly instead of reconciling two formats.
If you are writing the FAI requirement into an RFQ and want the clause list reviewed against the configuration you are buying, send the part number, the drawing revision and the programme’s standard revision.
Need an AS9102 first article inspection package, or a cross-reference from an existing part number?
Send the part number, drawing revision and the standard revision your programme requires, and we will confirm scope, article count and delivery date before quoting.
Email: info@airoadcon.com | WeChat: 18991927716