Home-Skuld Patents its Process to Cast Wrought Aluminum From Scrap
US-based manufacturing companySkuldis leading a DARPA Rubble to Rockets (R2R) program effort to convert scrap metal into structural parts through advanced casting and AI-assisted analysis.
The company has filed a patent application covering its ability to cast wrought-grade aluminum alloys, including 6061 and 7075, directly from scrap feedstock. That detail reframes what might otherwise read as a materials science footnote. Producing wrought-equivalent mechanical properties through casting alone, without traditional mill processing, would remove one of the more persistent constraints in field manufacturing.
The primary source for this work is Skuld’s own program announcement, with collaborative research contributions fromWorcester Polytechnic Institute(WPI),Foundry Casting Systems, andMatMicronia.
“Through the R2R effort, we are evaluating casting approaches, alloy behavior, and the use of AI tools that expand options for producing components in challenging environments,” said Sarah Jordan, CEO of Skuld LLC.
Overcoming Core Technical Challenges
The R2R program centers on three technical problems: identifying unknown scrap alloys quickly, predicting whether those alloys will perform adequately under load, and producing usable parts from them without conventional supply chains.
Skuld is addressing identification through AI-assisted spark testing, a technique that reads the light spectrum produced when metal is ground to estimate alloy composition. Microstructure and mechanical behavior prediction is led by WPI and MatMicronia.
On the production side, recent experiments eliminated cracking in complex geometries, a failure mode that had limited the range of parts castable from scrap. The results showed wrought-level strength achieved through casting and heat treatment alone, without the rolling or forging steps that typically produce that strength class in 6061 and 7075 aluminum.
Skuld’s process for producing those parts is called Additive Manufacturing Evaporative Casting (AMEC), which uses 3D printed patterns to create lost foam casting molds without hard tooling. That removes the lead time and capital cost associated with conventional tooling, relevant when sourcing is constrained or demand unpredictable.
Source: 3D Printing Industry
