On August 31, 2026, Chicago-based metal additive manufacturing in-situ monitoring hardware provider Phase3D announced a North American defense market distribution agreement with Phillips Federal, naming Phillips Federal as the exclusive distributor of its full product line to defense customers. Phase3D's in-situ inspection systems detect defects in real time during the printing process—rather than through post-print quality checks—and have already been deployed at the overseas Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence in Danville. EOS and Phase3D also maintain a collaboration framework. Value for powder buyers: ① The proliferation of in-situ quality inspection will reduce scrap rates for metal printed parts while raising upstream requirements for powder batch consistency and oxygen content; ② Defense supply chain demands for quality data traceability will cascade to powder suppliers, making batch-specific inspection reports a standard requirement.