The tunnel boring machine TULA (TUnnel for LAser) squeezed through a large hole in the wall of the injector building of the European XFEL facility. The hole, only 40 centimetres wider than the colossus that is TULA, made for a challengingly tight fit.
TULA, which started 7 July 2010 at the European XFEL construction site in Schenefeld (Schleswig-Holstein), arrived a couple of days ago at the DESY site in Hamburg. In 13 months it has completed three tunnels with a total length of 3084 metres of the tunnel system, including the 2.1-kilometre-long linac tunnel.
The second tunnel boring machine AMELI is still on its way to dig the (slightly thinner) rest of the nearly 6-kilometre long European XFEL tunnel system.
TULA is 6.17 metres in diameter and 71 metres long, weighs 550 tonnes and costs 18 million Euros.
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