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Last year, the Minnesota Technical Assistance program helped companies realize more than $3 million in energy savings
Mat Waddell: Casting out costs
by judy woodward
For Mat Waddell, a junior majoring in mechanical
engineering, one of the most valuable parts of
his experience as a summer intern at Twin City Die
Castings was what he learned about himself. After
his internship, the Minneapolis company, a producer
of metal parts for a broad variety of industrial, medical,
military and recreational purposes, offered him
a permanent job after graduation. Although he is
only an undergraduate, Waddell knew he had made
a significant impact on the company’s bottom line.
Yet, he decided he will aim for graduate studies in
mechanical engineering instead.
 “I loved the experience at Twin City,” he said. “But
knowing I have this experience in my background, I
can use the skills I’ve gained in a different way.”
Waddell’s project was to identify ways to save energy
at the manufacturing facility. Energy efficiency
engineer Dao Yang was his supervisor. Yang found
Waddell to be a quick study on the job.
“He’s a self-starter. Very determined and focused,”
Yang said. “I’m very busy at work, so I gave him a
quick overview, and Mat was able to pick up from
where I left off.”
Waddell turned out to have natural ability as
a project manager. He started out by conducting a
thorough energy audit of Twin City’s facility and an
assessment of which areas could realize the biggest
energy savings. Some of his proposed solutions were
as simple as replacing an ill-fitting door on the main
furnace and posting signs reminding workers to replace
covers on dip wells. In another
case, Waddell recommended specially
designed covers for hand-fed furnaces
where access to the interiors had to be
balanced against the energy savings
produced by covers.
Other improvements Waddell suggested
were designed to reduce high
temperature and increase airflow in
the compressor room, where the large
machines that power the manufacturing
processes are kept.
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| Mat Waddell, a
mechanical engineering
student who spent
last summer interning
at Twin City Die Castings
in St. Paul, opens
the main door of the liquid
bath furnace to take
a temperature reading
of molten aluminum. |
Waddell said the best part of the project was having
an opportunity to apply his academic learning
to real-world problems. “I got hands-on experience
with material that I’ve actually learned about in
class,” he said.
He was also surprised by the degree of autonomy
expected. “As my own project manager, I did pretty
much everything myself,” he said. Waddell adds that
he set all the elements of his work process—what
problems to address, whom to talk to, where to go,
what to do.
In his final project presentation, Waddell estimated
Twin City could save more than $100,000 on
its furnace and compressor operations if his suggestions
were fully implemented.
“Mat found at least 15 projects that would give us
possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy
savings,” Yang said. “His ideas and work paid for his
time here.”
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