Turkey’s TEI acquires M LINE Factory and M2 cusing 3D printers from GE Additive
Turkish aerospace company TUSAŞ Engine Industries, Inc. (TEI) is ramping up its metal additive capacity with the investment in two M LINE Factory and two M2 cusing 3D printers from GE Additive. The investment in GE Additive’s direct metal laser melting (DMLM) systems was announced today at the Paris Air Show.
Since its founding in 1985 through a collaboration between GE Aviation, Turkish Aerospace Industries, the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation and the Turkish Aeronautical Association, TEI has become a Turkish leader in the production of parts for commercial and military aircraft. Today, the company offers professional services to OEMs for over 40 types of military and commercial engine programs.
In recent years, the company has increasingly leveraged additive manufacturing technologies for the production of aircraft components and invested in state-of-the-art AM systems. Mirroring the aerospace industry at large, TEI has followed additive manufacturing’s evolution from a prototyping process to an industrial-scale, serial production solution.
The new GE Additive M Line Factory and M2 cusing systems will be installed at TEI’s headquarters in Eskişehir, where they will be used alongside the company’s existing fleet of laser and Arcam EBM machines.
Professor Dr. Mahmut Faruk Akşit, President and CEO of TEI, commented on the 3D printer acquisition, saying: “Today, we invest in TEI’s future by investing in additive manufacturing, ‘the future of manufacturing.’ Our longstanding partnership and collaboration with GE is now broadening with GE Additive’s machine portfolio.”
“The M2 remains the machine of choice for our aerospace customers—and for good reason,” added Jason Oliver, President and CEO of GE Additive. “It’s not only the workhorse of our machine portfolio, but it meets the specific needs and demands of this highly-regulated industry. And with so many aerospace customers on the cusp of industrialization, our M LINE Factory with its modular machine architecture, outstanding automation and reliability make it the perfect solution to drive economic, scalable series production on an industrial scale.”
Since its acquisition of Concept Laser, GE Additive has worked on and improved the M LINE Factory system significantly, enhancing the machine architecture and modularity, as well as its process controls and build capacity. The system consists of two independent machine units: the Laser Processing Station for part production and the Material Handling Station for setting up and dismantling.
The M2 cusing system, for its part, has been adopted for numerous applications in various industries, including aerospace, automotive, medical and dental. The metal 3D printer got an update last year, when GE Additive announced a slew of improvements, such as a new gas flow system, a new cooling unit for optical components, a higher build chamber and a more tightly controlled build environment.
