Skuld LLC announced that they had purchased the site belonging to the former Champion Foundry in Piqua, Ohio, a gray and iron foundry that had closed in March 2017. The company will continue to be focused on innovation in the metals industry, serving their clients through a number of innovations related to novel materials and manufacturing technologies.
The four buildings with nearly 32,000 square feet of space are being refurbished to be capable of casting a wide range of ferrous metals (gray, ductile iron, steels) and nonferrous metals (aluminum, brass, bronze, copper, nickel alloys). The plant will initially have 3,000 tons of capacity but plans are in place to expand to ten times that capacity in the next few years.
Skuld will be installing machining, foam blowing, a printer farm, and heat treating, adding to their current 5 small heat treat furnaces and adding to their operations, which primarily consist of lost foam casting. The new installations will aid the company as they serve the defense, tooling, and heavy equipment industries. They are also beginning to target production of heat treat fixtures and baskets.
Production at the new site is scheduled to begin in April 2024. Sarah Jordan, CEO of Skuld LLC, commented, "Skuld is looking forward to getting our induction melting furnaces installed so that we can produce higher temperature iron, steel, and nickel alloy castings." She continued, "many [heat treaters] have custom furnace components and fixtures that require high temperature metals. These parts can have extremely long lead times, sometimes over a year, which is a problem if they are stocked out." By using their new tooling free processes, Jordan says that they can help clients drive lead times down to less than a month, if not a day for emergency spares.
Skuld is a company founded by two metallurgical engineers, Mark DeBruin and Sarah Jordan, with ties to the heat treat industry. DeBruin is the former CTO of Thermal Process Holdings. Jordan formerly worked in heat treating at Timken and Commercial Metals and was a staff engineer for Nadcap heat treat.
The full press release from Skuld LLC is available upon request.
