Furnace builder AFC-Holcroft of Wixom, Michigan, USA recently closed their sales office in Shanghai, China.

The company has had a sales facility in China for many years but a change in direction by their parent company directed the closure. AFC-Holcroft was acquired by Austrian based Aichelin of Austria a number of years ago and the decision was made that AFC-Holcroft would handle sales efforts in North and South America and all Asian sales efforts would be handled by Aichelin. It is the understanding of “The Monty Heat Treat News” that all the employees of the Shanghai offices have been let go including the General Manager CJ Zhou who is a very qualified individual.

Skuld Opening New Foundry & Manufacturing Facility

Jan 29, 2024

“Skuld LLC announced that they had purchased the site belonging to the former Champion Foundry in Piqua, Ohio. Champion Foundry a gray and iron foundry closed in March 2017. 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 Nadcap heat treat Staff Engineer.

The company is focused on innovation in metals industry. They have 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) as well as nonferrous metals (aluminum, brass, bronze, copper, and 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 primarily uses lost foam casting. They also have a patent pending new hybrid process that combines lost foam casting with 3D printing so that it is not necessary to have tooling while having the capability of quickly producing components. They are also installing machining, foam blowing, a printer farm, and heat treating. Currently they have 5 small heat treat furnaces. The company primarily serves the defense, tooling, and heavy equipment industries. They are also beginning to target production of heat treat fixtures and baskets. In addition to parts, they also manufacture equipment for others to use their processes. Their new nanofoundry system, the Lightning Metal, is in development and launching this spring. Production casting at the new site is scheduled to begin this April.”

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