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[You're now entering the Mississippi High Country.]
[You're south of Memphis and you're neighboring the Mississippi Delta,]
[and it's a scenic, poetic land that spawned writers like William Faulkner,]
[and the blues men, Robert Johnson, "Son" House, and Muddy Waters.]
[It's also where GE has laid down roots itself,]
[in the small town of Batesville,]
[and it's here that GE will create some of the most advanced composites]
[[Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi] This is the most sophisticated manufacturing]
[General Electric does anywhere in the world,]
[and we're going to do it in Batesville, Mississippi.]
[[narrator] Lightweight carbon fiber composites in the fan system]
[of our new GEnx engine are key in reducing weight]
[We call this a composite fan platform, and Batesville will craft 18 of them]
[for every GEnx engine we build.]
[They're ultradurable at a fraction of the weight of conventional metals,]
[and they sure don't make them like metal parts, either.]
[What do you say we take a look at how we do it?]
[>>Hi, welcome to the Batesville composite operation.]
[[narrator] Making carbon fiber composites is a marriage--]
[a marriage of ultra-advanced manufacturing and the finest in human craftsmanship.]
[The fellas call this "The Coffin,"]
[and in it, the fan platforms are pressed and injected with an epoxy resin.]
[Then it's off to the special "5-axis vertical milling machine," they call it,]
[and it's here that the platform is sized to the blueprint.]
[Now we're coming to the end of the assembly]
[where the fan platform gets a strong, weather-resistant paint.]
[Sure looking good there, Marcus.]
[Batesville also handles final assembly--]
[the stater system for the huge front fan.]
[And that stater system protects the fan's internal components]
[and channels the flow of air that goes through that fan.]
[The beloved novelist William Faulkner, who lived just 30 minutes from here]
[at Old Miss, used to say, "Don't try just to be better than your contemporaries,]
[but try to be better than yourself."]
[He couldn't have said it better, in describing GE's unique undertaking]
