Christian Miranda | project-LSPACEmca

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Manufacturing Engineering Internship @ Mercury Systems

Portfolio

Interning @ Mercury System's Microelectronics Packaging Center in Phoenix

Over the span of almost two years, I worked at Mercury Systems as a manufacturing engineering intern. This was at the Phoenix site, which operates on all fronts regarding printed circuit board fabrication and packaging. This was a continuous experience in that, regardless of the semester I found myself enrolled in, I was employed and actively working. The time that I spent here was split across various functions. My core responsibilities involved supporting manufacturing operations for our microelectronics production floor, but it also included some work in a wafer packaging cleanroom and a failure analysis lab.

Picture: General Printed Circuit Board Fabrication & Packaging Floor, 1st View

Picture: General Printed Circuit Board Fabrication & Packaging Floor, 2nd View

Responsibilities as a Manufacturing Engineering Intern

I worked in a team of about 15 engineers during this time. While my team was split into product and manufacturing engineers, since I was the sole intern of the group, I had the pleasure of being exposed to many things. I got to learn a little bit about mechanical design, manufacturing operations, electrical systems, and more.

Picture: AM Design Software Workflow | Siemens NX (1st), nTop (2nd), Simufact Additive (3rd), Materialise Magics (4th), GOM Inspect (5th)

For example, some of the projects I was involved in were to support our cleanroom floor that was dedicated to wafer packaging. The goal was to bring about new business in the form of building end-to-end packaging processes for 200mm [8"] and 300mm [12"] wafers from the ground up. So to be an effective aide to the engineers, I learned how to use all the equipment in our wafer cleanroom. This included dicing saws, plasma clean stations, dispensing equipment, metrology equipment, etc.

It's important to note that the software workflow is broadly linear, but this isn't always the case. Sometimes (as you'll see below), nTop, which can generate complex TPMS structures may not actually be needed for a given part. As such we may skip or return to certain applications as needed. Ultimately, however, this is the general process in bringing a part from idea in NX to reality in GOM Inspect (the step where we scan the metal 3D print)!