Mechanical Co-op at Heller Industries
Heller Industries is the pioneer in SMT reflow solering industries in 1980's. "Over the years, Heller has partnered with its customers to continually refine the systems to satisfy advanced applications requirements." By embracing challenge and change, Heller has earned the position of World Leader in Reflow Technology. Its customers include some of the biggest semiconductor manufacturers in the world. The owner, David Heller, is a Cornell graduate and he would come back to Cornell every spring looking for one co-op for the company. In spring of 2017, I was fortunate enough to be the selected one. The co-op program is a two terms internship in which students would take classes during the summer and work in the fall and the following summer.
In the first term of the co-op, I was sent to Shanghai for technical training. I learned about manufacturing processes of sheet metal parts and machined parts in two local vendors near Shanghai. Then I spent three weeks on different assembly lines at Heller Shanghai. It was my first time seeing these manufacturing and assembly processes. Through this techinical training, I learned more about what we could made and how to design parts that reduce the cost of manufacturing and assembly. After I went back to Heller New Jersey, I was assigned with serveral projects to meet customers' specifications. For example, I configured oven design to conduct thermal tests at a controlled cool rate to meet customer specification. Then I traveled to Shanghai again for training test engineer to conduct large scale thermal tests. In addition, I designed and created a new heater with insulator inserted to avoid current leakage due to evaporating flux. The new heater design was forwarded to Korean manufacturing team for large-scale production.
In fall of 2018, I received the Distinguished Co-op Award by Cornell Co-op Program Office:
