August 4, 2021 | Things have really picked up here in my last week. Over these last few days, I have been busy attending training sessions, meetings, company events, and finishing my project. Early in the week, Microtek hosted a customer service and communication training session for any employee that wanted to attend. I joined in with hopes of […]

July 27, 2021 | Week 8 started out on a difficult note when the oven that Juan and I have been installing did not work. This particular oven is designed to be nearly airtight and maintain a nitrogen environment which will allow Microtek to expand its SMT capabilities. For the better part of last week, Juan and I attempted […]

July 21, 2021 | Microtek is growing quickly. In the six weeks that I’ve been an intern, I’ve seen six new hires and countless interviews. Recently there have been discussions on expanding into a second shift and even a new facility. It’s certainly an exciting time to be at Microtek. One of Microtek’s goals, as they grow, is to […]

July 21, 2021 | This week, I received disappointing news; the materials I have been waiting for will not arrive before my internship ends. Fortunately, Microtek has some components leftover from past projects that I can use to test my procedure and get a rough idea of how my results would have turned out. This ordeal with my materials […]

July 8, 2021 | Early this week, my project hit a road bump. Initially, we thought we had the materials I would need to get started, but that was not the case. Luckily, we made this discovery early in the week, so we had plenty of time to discuss alternative options. After talking with Tri, we determined that it […]

July 8, 2021 | Growing up, my mom used to quote her high school track coach; she’d say, “proper preparation prevents poor performance.” Proper preparation has definitely been the theme of the past few weeks. Since I started working in the production room, I’ve been learning and practicing SMT and die attach techniques. Ultimately, all this practice aims to […]

June 24, 2021 | Goodbye training wheels! This week I made the transition from practice materials to real components. In this transition, I also moved away from SMT and focused mainly on die-attach. Die-attach requires three steps: first, a thin layer of epoxy is spread across a substrate; second, a die is aligned and applied to the substrate; and […]

June 17, 2021 | Early this week I attended two meetings that really helped the development of my project. The first was the weekly R&D meeting where I had the opportunity to present my background research and speak with Tri to better understand the importance of my project. The second was a meeting with a sales representative whose company […]

June 8, 2021 | Last week, after 17 hours of driving and numerous stretch breaks, I finally arrived in California. This summer, I am an intern at Microtek, a small, San Diego based, biotech company that specializes in the design and production of micro-scale medical devices. Since many of Microtek’s projects have a medical nature, the company is especially […]