Case Study: Avio Aero achieves industrial-scale certified 3D printing of GE9X turbine blades with Materialise

How Materialise Software Solutions Helped to Create the World’s Largest Jet Engine

Avio Aero, a GE Aviation business producing the low-pressure turbine blades for the GE9X, faced the challenge of scaling certified additive manufacturing to industrial volumes while meeting strict aerospace traceability, quality, and efficiency requirements. To support projected peak production of about 60,000 TiAl blades per year and integrate factory operations with ERP planning, Avio Aero selected Materialise and its software tools (notably Materialise Streamics and Magics) to standardize, automate, and control the end-to-end AM process.

Materialise implemented Streamics as the central AM management system, together with Magics for build preparation and integration with the Arcam Build Processor running on Avio Aero’s Arcam EBM machines, enabling machine connectivity, full traceability, automated platform prep, and SAP integration. This solution let Avio Aero reliably operate 40 Arcam systems (with plans to add 10 more), capture and store build-job data, improve production visibility and planning, and scale to the ~60,000 blades/year target while reducing cost and environmental impact compared with traditional molding—demonstrating Materialise’s ability to deliver certified, high-volume AM production.

Avio Aero

Danila Marco

Digital Technology Additive Leader