We have enjoyed much success in the last 18 months and the need for our services has continued to grow. This steady growth has necessitated once again that we expand our facilities. We extend our thanks to our clients for this success and we will strive to continue to provide high-end engineering expertise, with rapid turnaround, at very attractive rates. Our new facility will have:

• 15000 sqf. of useable space

• Fully appointed laboratory for mechanical and electrical testing

• Expanded rapid manufacturing bay with SLS, SLA, injection molding, vacuum forming, and conventional machine tools.

• Easy access to ASU research facilities, airports, and Phoenix area

PADT’s UNIROTOR is a highly efficient air compressor/expander and water management system that improves output and reduces the cost/kW of small PEM fuel cell power plants. Our latest design incorporates all of the knowledge we have gained from our prior designs and the 1250-hour endurance test we recently completed. The endurance test showed two deterioration mechanisms – one due to bearing fretting and one due to uneven vane wear. Both of these issues were easily designed out of the system. For cost information, please see the article below.

Call us or visit our web site to discuss how this technology can help make fuel cell distributed power plants more practical 

Our regenerative blower technology has now been demonstrated over a 3,000 hour period in a supersaturated Hydrogen/Nitrogen mixture (sloppy wet with water). This simple unit employs only two major housing parts, a plastic rotor, an internally integrated motor, and is fully sealed. 

This is an important milestone because it shows that this technology can be used in a real world application for an extended period. PADT is currently taking the performance data from that test as input to design improvements.

As part of a recently awarded DOE/UTC Fuel Cell contract, PADT is developing a high flow mixed flow blower (up to 200 SCFM, 1-2 psi) and a two stage regenerative blower (up to 90 SCFM, 6-12 psi) for fuel cell automotive and stationary power applications. These machines are being designed specifically for low cost and early prototypes will be available later this year. The mixed flow blower will be made primarily from plastics and the regenerative blower will be anodized aluminum. Next year we will be developing manufacturing tooling and preparing for low - moderate production rates.

With the move to our new larger facilities, PADT now has the room to offer some of the technologies that we have had in development to customers. The most exciting of these technologies is the Prototype Injection Molding. This process marries stereolithography, epoxy casting, sculpting, and traditional injection molding in order to deliver high quality injected parts in a short period.  

The tooling created by this process can be used in normal injection molding presses and are good for around 1,000 shots with standard plastics. PADT is excited about this technology because we feel it is applicable to the Custom Blower business, since it allows us to create production plastic parts cheaper and faster than machining or steel tooling. 

Many of our clients are asking us for cost information regarding our fuel cell air handling technologies. This information is important to the industry as we work to make fuel cells affordable, and cost considerations should be foremost in people’s minds. Therefore, we have put together the following table to provide you with our cost estimates for our various technologies as of Summer 2002. We believe the lower volume costs (between 1 and 100) will drop over the next few years as we tool up – but these are the prices as of today. Please recognize that these are estimates. We hope this helps you in your technical and business planning. Let us know if we can do more to help.

Approximate Per Unit Cost of PADT Blower Technology by Production Volume

Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies

7755 S Research Dr, Suite 110

Tempe, AZ 85284

480.813.4884 V

480.813.4807 F

1.800.293.PADT

"We Bring Dimension to Your Ideas"

www.padtinc.com