We always love to see PADT customers get mentioned in the media, so we were very happy to see that Orthosensor’s Knee Balancer making the news:
Although they do not get a shout out by name, we know that device very well because we have worked on it with Orthosensor and their Arizona team is actually located within PADT’s Tempe facility. You can learn more about this device by visiting here.
We hope to see more of this product as its use spreads.
We expect to see even more of this product as more and more doctors start adopting it in their pr
After working with the mining industry in Arizona for years, we have finally gotten around to joining the two professional groups that work with the industry: Arizona Mining & Industry Get our Support, better known as AMIGOS, and the Arizona Mining Association. We are excited about being able to contribute more to the Arizona mining community through these two groups.
Mining is still a dominant industry in the state, especially copper mining with the state providing 68% of the copper produced in the US in 2011. PADT has supplied software and hardware to both large multinational mining companies, equipment suppliers, and small consultants. We have also provide simulation of mining processes and airflow in mines to several companies. With the addition of Flownex to our product and services offering, our involvement with the industry has grown even more.
But, to be honest, by far and away the coolest part of being involved with mining in all of the states we work in is when we get to go visit a mine, or get to look up close at the huge equipment our customers make. This is some cool engineering. We plan on doing visiting new mines and exploring more equipment as we get more involved with these groups.
If you are interested in joining either group, click here.
Last night was the kickoff gathering for the Rocky Mountain region of the Cleantech Open at the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce. It was a great gathering where all of the fantastic volunteers who run the event and provide mentoring get some much deserved recognition.
Better yet, midnight was the official start for the 2013 Cleantech Open. If you are involved in a Cleantech startup of any kind, or know someone who is, we strongly recommend that you apply to participate in this years competition. PADT is involved in a lot of startup organizations, accelerators, and incubators, and we have never seen an activity that adds so much value for their participants, giving those that make it through the process with a huge head start on success.
Don’t know about the Cleantech Open? Here is a blurb from their website:
The Cleantech Open provides entrepreneurs and technologists the resources needed to launch and create successful and sustainable clean technology companies. We do this through our accelerator programs which provide participants with training, mentoring, infrastructure, relationships and funding opportunities to help grow them into world-class cleantech companies.
Since its inception in 2006, the Cleantech Open has awarded over $5 million in cash and services to support cleantech growth companies. The 727 participating companies in the Cleantech Open’s accelerator programs have raised more than $750 million in external capital.
They also have a great video from last years finals that explains the value of the whole competition:
PADT is very proud to be a regional sponsor and is looking forward to also volunteering throughout the year.
If you have any interest in joining those that are using technology and capitalism to solve the mound of energy and environmental problems that we face, consider getting involved in the Cleantech Open. You will not regret it.
PADT is proud to announce that we are officially certified to resell the full line of Stratasys products, including the newly added Polyjet 3D Printers from Objet. We were very pleased when Objet and Stratasys decided to merge to become the new Stratasys, and we have been waiting patiently for the legal merger to take place, and then for the two organizations to merge their businesses. Now that wait is over and PADT just completed our sales and support training for the Polyjet product line and we can offer it to customers in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada.
Here is a family photo of the line:
As you can see, they start with small desktop systems and work their way up to the monster Objet1000, a true beast of a machine capable of printing parts up to 39 inches long!
There are two key characteristics that really sets these systems apart: The variety of materials available and the precision of the parts they make.Because the Polyjet systems use ink-jet printer heads, they lay down small droplets of photocurable material. So the resolution of each layer can be up to 600 dpi, and the layers themselves can be very thin, as thin as 16 microns.The same ink-jet technology also allows for the use of such a wide variety of material. Over 100 different materials can be made by mixing two different materials during the build. This allows materials the have the properties of ABS, Polypropylene, rubber, or transparent plastic. And materials can vary on a given layer or from layer to layer.Another set of ink-jet heads allow for the deposition of a water soluble support material, that is easily washed away to make the post processing of parts made on a Polyjet machine simple and fast.
We cold go on and on about this technology, or you can see it for yourself. As we mentioned, this technology is not new to PADT, so we know a lot about it and are eager to share what we have learned over the years. If you want to learn more, simply contact us and we will be ready to answer your questions, show you some machines, and help determine if Polyjet technology is the right fit for you.
You can also check out our new Polyjet product pages, where you can find brochures and videos that give a lot more information.
And look for more information on this blog as we share stories, tips, and hints on the use of these systems.
We just finished the last group and we can say that tonight’s open house at PADT was a big success. We had over 100 visitors that came to see our facility and learn about simulation, product development, and rapid prototyping. Our favorite was all the little kids that made it out to learn about 3D Printing. They had the best questions and their enthusiasm was infectious.
There were so many visitors that we didn’t have time to take too many pictures, but hopefully the folks from the Scitech Festival will have lots to share. Here is one:
If you missed the event, have no fear, most of what we talked about is available on our website: www.padtinc.com.
Or if you have a group that would like a tour, just contact us and we will set it up.
To see other events that are part of the Arizona Scitech Festival visit: azscitechfest.org.
Come join us for refreshments and networking with the cleantech community at the South Denver Metro Chamber as we launch the Cleantech Open 2013 Business Accelerator in the Rocky Mountain Region.
This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs, volunteers and sponsors to learn more about the organization and help lead the Cleantech revolution in the Rockies.
Overview of Evening:
5:00 – Networking, Food and Beverages
6:00 – Overview of 2013 Cleantech Open – Hear from Past Alumni – 2012 Accomplishments & Volunteer Appreciation
It is FREE, but please register so they can get a good count and have a name tag ready for you:
We received great news last night that the team PADT has been working with, HDR, has been chosen to do the feasibility study on developing the Front Range Airport into Spaceport Colorado. The Denver Post has a good summary of the effort.
Norman Stucker, our General Manager for Colorado Operations, has been a contributor to this effort to grow commercial space in Colorado. PADT has been very pleased with the support of the local business community, the governor’s office, and the legislature on this effort.
This is another important and successful step in a long but very exciting journey. Stay tuned for more!
PADT is very honored to have received the “Small Company of the Year Technical Contributions Award” from the Phoenix Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) at their annual award banquet held on February 9th, 2013.
Quoting the award, it was given: “In Recognition of Developing Outstanding Engineering Services and Technologies for Companies Throughout the Southwest.” It was a very special honor to receive this particular award because it is recognition from the local electronics business community, an important part of PADT’s customer base. As a company focused on providing products and services to customers that develop physical products, what most people consider mechanical engineering, being thanked for our contributions by a group of very hard core electrical engineers was truly touching.
The awards banquet was well attended, there are a lot of electrical engineers in Phoenix. Seven of PADT’s staff were able to attend, including three of the four owners. The networking before the dinner was an enjoyable time and we were able to talk with many customers and managers of groups that we have serviced for a long time, many for over 15 years. Some were even customers back in 1994 or 1995 when the company was just starting out.
It is always a privilege to be listed with other companies who are so successful and well known. Being a co-sponsor with Freescale, Intel, and On Semiconductor, who are all also customers, was icing on the evening’s cake.
It might be time to start looking for another shelf in the lobby for awards. We placed this one between our Governor’s Celebration of Innovation and ASU Innovation Awards. The shelves are getting so crowded that I had to move my FDM Kachina models to another shelf!
In all seriousness, we truly do appreciate the recognition that these awards signify. They are acknowledgement from our peers and the community that what we do here at PADT is different, that by doing a good job at something you really enjoy doing, you can make a difference.
There was time during the ceremony for a short acceptance speech. We missed filming the beginning which basically said “Thank you very much, this is an truly an honor, coming from a group made up of Electrical Engineers to a company that provides Mechanical Engineering products and services. Most of you here are customers of PADT, and what we…”
We just added a new page to the “About” portion of our website: PADT By the Numbers.
I know this will be no surprise to anyone who knows engineers, but we like to quantify things. This page takes a bunch of numbers that describe PADT and summarizes them in one place:
To save you the effort of clicking on the link, here are the numbers:
Years in Business: 19
Number of Employees: 72
Count of Employees with PhD‘s: 6
Average Number of Years Employees have Worked for PADT: 6.76
Number of States with at Least One PADT Employee: 7
Average Years of Experience for Engineers: 17.7
Number of Employees with Masters Degrees: 12
Quantity of Named Customers Served: Over 1,500
Count of Companies that have Co-Located within PADT: 4
Number of Compute Cluster Cores: Over 600
Size of Terabyts of RAM for Compute Cluster: Over 2.5
Amount invested in Lab and Prototyping Equipment: $1,500,000
Count of Approved Vendors: 350
Quantity of Approved Medical Device Vendors: 60
Amount of RapidPrototyping Models Delivered: Over 100,000
Number of FunctionalPrototypes Created: Over 500
Count of Product Development Projects Completed: Over 300
Amount of Numerical Simulation Models Run: Over 7,000
Quantity of Small Business Innovative Research Grants (SBIR) awarded: 13
Number of Companies PADT has Done an Angel Investment in: 9
Every innovator faces the same problem: how do I make sure that I have protection for my Intellectual Property (IP). Back “in the day” when I started in this world we wrote everything down in a numbered lab book and that was the record. But these days we just never write anything down, it is all electronic. Spending hours printing and pasting into a notebook just does not work.
Enter Traklight. This is a portal for people with IP that needs to be protected, from at-home inventors to full sized companies. We met the people behind the site through some mutual friends and had a sit down with them to understand what they were offering. We were so impressed we thought it was definitely worth sharing.
ID your IP
There first offering is a wizard that… well I could write something or just quote their site:
If you don’t know what Intellectual Property you possess, our ID Your IP questionnaire walks you through interactive questions and provides a Potential Intellectual Property report. If you want to identify your risk of losing your IP, take our IP Risk Quiz.
IP Vault
For an established company like PADT, we really like their IP Vault. This is a resource for organizing all your files with time stamps that help prove what you came up with, when you came up with it. Not only does it organize and stamp your IP, it also stores it securely in the cloud so you do not have to worry about loosing it, or even if you do backups, you do not have to worry about moving it if you or your computer moves. Very useful.
IP Cloud
As a leader in modern IP protection, the folks at TrakLight.com have also stepped up and created a resource for people creating IP called IP-Cloud. There are some great links here, everything from lawyers to marketing companies to software developers. PADT is even listed.
Learn More
The best way to learn about TrakLight.com is to visit their website at… you guessed it: http://www.traklight.com.
The thing that gets me about “The Big Bank Theory” is how accurate it is. They seem to always get it right and their treatment of 3D Printing during “The Cooper/Kripke Inversion” last week was spot on.
We are pleased to promote the fact that The 3D Printing Store in Denver is open for business and they have their new uPrint SE Plus up and running. We are very excited about this new more retail oriented face for 3D Printing bringing the dream of rapid prototyping as a mainstream technology to a huge audience, and we wish the owners great success. We are very honored to have provided them with their Stratasys uPrint SE Plus printer.
We really feel that before long this location will become a center for invention and creativity and people will find ways to use this technology that were never thought of before.
The store will be holding an open house on February 7th from 3:00 – 6:00 PM. Click here to learn more.
The Graphical User Interface (GUI) for ANSYS Mechanical APDL is written in a toolset called Tcl/Tk. This is actually the same GUI toolset that ICEM CFD uses. Way back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the .com bubble was bursting, PADT wrote and Advanced Customization class for what was then just called ANSYS. We still use a large portion of that class today, but one area that has really been mothballed is the chapter on Tcl/Tk.
But some users may find some value there so we present it here, in its un-edited and un-verified totality as a resource for the community.
We are pleased to promote the fact that 
