GE Additive announces metal additive manufacturing deals with GE Aviation & FusiA Aeroadditive at Paris Air Show

GE Aviation has invested in 17 additional Arcam EBM A2X systems and 10 Spectra H platforms, GE Additive has announced at Paris Air Show. The new machines will be installed across the facilities of GE Aviation and Avio Aero, an Italian aerospace company GE acquired in 2013, in the United States and Europe. This new Electron Beam Melting capacity will be put to work within the manufacturing workflows of the GE9X engine, being used primarily for the production of titanium aluminide blades on the engine’s low-pressure turbine. The GE9X engine is being developed for Boeing’s 777X wide-body jet, with the additively manufactured TiAI blades weighing in at around half the weight of traditional nickel-alloy blades. This results in a fuel consumption reduction of 10% compared to its predecessor, the GE90 engine. The respective build capacities on the EBM platforms means GE Aviation will also be able to additively manufacture six blades per batch with the A2X machines and ten per batch on the Spectra H systems.