  Many experiments are currently using or proposing to use large area GEM foils
in their detectors, which is creating a need for commercially available GEM
foils. Currently CERN is the only main distributor of large GEM foils, however
with the growing interest in GEM technology keeping up with the increasing
demand for GEMs will be difficult. Thus the commercialization of GEMs up to 50
$\times$ 50 cm$^2$ has been established by Tech-Etch Inc. of Plymouth, MA, USA
using the single-mask technique. The electrical performance and optical quality
of the single-mask GEM foils have been found to be on par with those produced
by CERN. The next critical step towards validating the Tech-Etch single-mask
GEM foils is to test their performance under physics conditions. These
measurements will allow us to quantify and compare the gain and efficiency of
the detector to other triple-GEM detectors. This will be done by constructing
several single-mask triple-GEM detectors, using foils manufactured by
Tech-Etch, which follow the design used by the STAR Forward GEM Tracker (FGT).
These detectors will investigate ways in which to further decrease the material
budget and increase the efficiency of the detector by incorporating perforated
Kapton spacer rings rather than G10 spacing grids to reduce the dead area of
the detector. The materials and tooling needed to assemble the triple-GEM
detectors have been acquired. The GEM foils have been electrically tested, and
a handful have been optically scanned. We found these results to be consistent
with GEM foils produced by CERN. With the success of these initial tests,
construction of the triple-GEM detectors is now under way.
