GE Lynn jet engine turbine disk friction welding

Friction welding of two $25,000 titanium turbine disks to make a $70,000 part — geometry too tight for electron beam access. Used as the high-stakes example of friction welding's irreversibility and the cost of getting it wrong.

There are some very critical friction welds. If you go up to General Electric Lynn — anybody know what General Electric Lynn is? We're in Massachusetts. They build jet engines. They keep wanting to close it, because most of the General Electric jet engines are made in Evendale, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. But they don't close General Electric Lynn, although they've been talking about it for 25 years. The reason they don't close it is mostly because they have some very good engineers who don't want to live in Cincinnati and would rather live in New England. I'm serious. I've talked to some of the vice presidents at General Electric and I say, we could save a lot of money if we consolidated it all to one location. Evendale's probably eight or ten times the size of Lynn.