Theo Brandt — Mechanical Engineering Student
Ann Arbor, MI
Third-year mechanical engineering student at the University of Michigan, seeking a summer 2027 design or manufacturing internship. Took 1.9 kg out of a Formula SAE front upright without losing stiffness, and spent last summer on a tooling floor cutting setup time on a live production cell.
Experience
Manufacturing Engineering Intern, Keelson Tooling · May 2026 – August 2026
Twelve weeks on a cell making stamped brackets for agricultural equipment.
- Redesigned a fixture so the operator loads from one side instead of two, cutting setup time per changeover from 22 minutes to 9.
- Traced a 4.3% scrap rate on one bracket to a worn locating pin and wrote the inspection interval that has held scrap under 1% since.
- Modeled and had machined six replacement soft jaws, retiring a set of shimmed fixtures the cell had run on for three years.
Undergraduate Machine Shop Assistant, University of Michigan, Mechanical Engineering Department · January 2025 – present
Ten hours a week alongside coursework.
- Certifies undergraduates on the manual lathe and mill; has signed off 120 students with no recordable injury on the shift.
- Rebuilt the tooling checkout log as a shared sheet, cutting unreturned tools from about 30 a term to 4.
Projects
- Formula SAE, suspension subteam — Front corner design for the 2026 car.
- Benchtop wind tunnel — An open-source tunnel for high school physics labs.
Education
- B.S.E. Mechanical Engineering · University of Michigan · August 2024 – April 2028
Skills
- Design: SolidWorks, Fusion 360, GD&T, Tolerance stacks, Design for manufacture
- Analysis: ANSYS, Finite element analysis, MATLAB, Python, Data acquisition
- Shop: Manual lathe, CNC milling, TIG welding, FDM printing, Fixture build
Certifications
- Certified SolidWorks Associate (CSWA) — Dassault Systemes
