Press Release: Expanding its Product Development Expertise, PADT Adds Dr. Tyler Shaw, Former Head of Advanced Manufacturing at PING, as Director of Engineering
Posted on December 3, 2020, by: Eric Miller
Change is an important part of growth. Our mission within the Engineering Services team at PADT is:
Delivering Premier Engineering Services to Enable World-Changing Product Development.
To do that, we need a world class leader. And when our long-time Director of Engineering decided to move to something different, we searched high and low for a new person. The ability and experience of the applicants was amazing and making a decision was difficult. In the end we were fortunate to have Dr. Tyler Shaw join PADT.

Read the official press release below to learn more. We are excited about this new phase for our consulting offering. Tyler's background and knowlede open new and excited doors.
If you would like to explore how PADT can provide product development or simulation assistance to your organization, contact us, and Tyler along with the rest of the team will be eager to learn more.
Expanding its Product Development Expertise, PADT Adds Dr. Tyler Shaw, Former Head of Advanced Manufacturing at PING, as Director of Engineering
Shaw Tapped to Lead PADT’s Simulation and Product Development Team Who Provide Services Across Industries Worldwide
TEMPE, Ariz., December 3, 2020 ─ PADT, a globally recognized provider of numerical simulation, product development, and 3D printing products and services, today announced it has hired Dr. Tyler Shaw as its Director of Engineering to oversee the company’s simulation and product development consulting team effective immediately. Shaw most recently served as the head of Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation at PING golf, and has worked as an engineer, product manager, and educator across a diverse range of industries for more than 20 years.

“PADT’s ability to help our customers solve tough problems is a key industry differentiator, and we’re thrilled to welcome Tyler as a leader to oversee our team of simulation and design experts,” said Eric Miller, co-founder and principal of PADT. “His experience and impressive technical background will enable us to continue our high-quality service while providing fresh, innovative ideas for developing products to their full potential.”
Dr. Shaw replaces Rob Rowan as the director of Engineering. Rowan spent nearly 20 years with PADT and is credited for driving the growth of PADT’s engineering services and capabilities. “We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Rob for his dedication and leadership,” said Miller. “He was greatly admired for his broad engineering knowledge and business acumen and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

After a comprehensive search, Dr. Shaw emerged as the most technically advanced, skilled, and capable candidate to assume the role as PADT’s engineering leader. Dr. Shaw will focus on setting strategy, managing resources, and providing technical expertise to solve customer challenges. Prior to working at PADT and PING, Dr. Shaw served as a product manager for Vestas where he led customer-specific technical and commercial solutions for wind turbine sales across North, Central, and South America. He was also a principal systems engineer for Orbital Sciences Corporation, now Northrop Grumman, where he managed projects related to the development of world-class rockets, satellites, and other space systems.
“I am thrilled to join PADT and am ready for the challenge of taking its engineering services to the next level,” said Dr. Shaw. “I’ve worked with PADT in my previous post and was impressed with their capabilities and portfolio of clients, which covers a diverse set of industries. My background and technical knowledge across many of these sectors will serve PADT’s customers well.”
To learn more about Dr. Shaw and PADT’s simulation and product development services, please visit www.padtinc.com.

About PADT
PADT is an engineering product and services company that focuses on helping customers who develop physical products by providing Numerical Simulation, Product Development, and 3D Printing solutions. PADT’s worldwide reputation for technical excellence and experienced staff is based on its proven record of building long-term win-win partnerships with vendors and customers. Since its establishment in 1994, companies have relied on PADT because “We Make Innovation Work.” With over 90 employees, PADT services customers from its headquarters at the Arizona State University Research Park in Tempe, Arizona, and from offices in Torrance, California, Littleton, Colorado, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Austin, Texas, and Murray, Utah, as well as through staff members located around the country. More information on PADT can be found at www.PADTINC.com.
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More formal versions of this Press Release are available here in PDF and here in HTML.
PADT’s Penchant for Patents
Posted on June 5, 2019, by: Eric Miller
When they walk into PADT's main office in Tempe, Arizona, the first thing most people notice is our "wall-o-patents." Over the years, PADT employees have been named on 43 patents. They range from fuel cell membranes to silicon wafer coating to a slew of medical devices. When we received notification that staff members were listed as co-inventor on two patients with numbers over 10,000,000 we thought it was a good excuse to celebrate the years of contributions our engineers have made.
The rich collection highlights the diversity of industries we work on and the ingenuity of our staff. When the companies who own the Intellectual Property (IP) represented on that wall came to PADT looking for assistance with research, development, troubleshooting, and testing of their products they found a partner that did more than carry out tasks. PADT collaborated with them to create novel solutions and approaches that resulted in IP.
You can view all of our patents on our wall... or on our patent page here.
We want to say thank you to our staff and our customers for letting us be part of their innovation.
If you are looking for a partner that can work with you to turn your ideas in into Intellectual Property, please learn about our Product Development team or reach out to info@padtinc.com.
Getting to Know PADT: Medical Device Product Development
Posted on June 4, 2018, by: Eric Miller


Solving the Tough Problems

Understanding Medical Devices

Quality Centric

Let us Engineer your Medical Device Innovations
Here is a powerpoint we put together last year with even more information: Product development for medical devices is something we are just plain good at. Large corporations and startups come to PADT to because we get the job done. You can see some great case studies here that tell the story in the words of our customers. Reach out to us via email (info@padtinc.com) or give us a call at 480.813.4884 and we can talk about how our team can help engineer your medical device innovation. PADT-Medical-Overview-Portfolio-2018_02_13-1Kidneys and Child Hearts – Our Recent Real World Experiences with 3D Printing in Medicine
Posted on May 2, 2017, by: Eric Miller



PADT Welcomes John Williams to Business Development Role
Posted on April 5, 2017, by: Eric Miller



New: PADT’s Medical Device Capabilities and Portfolio Presentation
Posted on March 28, 2017, by: Eric Miller

You can learn more here and if you have any questins, simply email info@padtinc.com or call 480.813.4884.
Press Release: PADT, Avnet and Tiempo Development Introduce Design Days, Hosted by Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation
Posted on February 16, 2017, by: Eric Miller

Press Release:
PADT, Avnet and Tiempo Development Introduce Design Days, Hosted by Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation
Design Days Brings Arizona’s Top Product Development Experts Together to Provide Free Technical Advice to Local Startup
TEMPE, Ariz., February 16, 2017 ─ In a move that gives startups and product developers the opportunity to get design and production consultations from the top product development experts in Arizona, Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies (PADT), in partnership with Avnet, Tiempo Development and the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation (CEI), are officially opening Design Days to the local startup community. Hosted by the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation (CEI) at 275 N. GateWay Drive Phoenix, Arizona 85034. The next session takes place on February 21 from 1- 4 p.m. “We’ve compiled a roster of top industry experts in product development from a wide-range of disciplines for Design Days,” said Patti Dubois, Assistant Executive Director at CEI. “Our goal is simply to lend a hand to entrepreneurs who aspire to develop great products and software. When we’re able to help an organization or individual grow and innovate, it elevates Arizona’s technology community as a whole.”


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Media Contact Alec Robertson TechTHiNQ on behalf of PADT 585-281-6399 alec.robertson@techthinq.com | PADT Contact Eric Miller PADT, Inc. Principal & Co-Owner 480.813.4884 eric.miller@padtinc.com |
Thoughts on Biofabrication (and a Visit to WFIRM)
Posted on November 3, 2016, by: Dhruv Bhate, PhD
The Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) hosted about 400 attendees at the annual Biofabrication conference, held this year at Winston-Salem, NC (Oct 28-Nov 1, 2016). The conference included a 2 hour tour of WFIRM's incredible facilities, 145 posters, 200 or so presentations and a small trade show with about 30 exhibitors. As a mechanical engineer attending my first bio-related conference, I struggled to fully comprehend many concepts and terms in some of the deeper technical presentations. Nonetheless, there was a lot I DID learn, and this post serves to summarize my thoughts on the four high-level insights I gleaned amidst the pile of information on offer. I hope these are of value to the larger community that is not on the front lines of this exciting and impactful area of research.More than Organs
To say biofabrication is all about making organs is like saying manufacturing is all about making spacecrafts carrying humans to Mars. It misses a lot of the other valid human needs that can be met and suggests organs are the end of the biofabrication R&D curve, when they only represent one manifestation (arguably the most difficult one in our current sense of the world) of the application of the science. If we take a step back, biofabrication is fundamentally about "manufacturing with living materials" - in that sense, biofabrication blurs the lines between natural and man-made entities. If you could manipulate and engineer living cells in physical constructs, what all could you do? Here is a list of some examples of the different applications that were discussed at the conference:- Toxicology Studies - Organovo's examples of skin, liver and kidney tissue being used to evaluate drug efficacy
- Body-on-a-Chip - A solution to aid in pre-clinical work to study whole systems (a key regulatory hurdle) and potentially displace animal studies in the future
- Tissues for Therapy - This could involve patches, stents and other such fixes of a therapeutic nature (as opposed to replacing the entire organ in question)
- Non-Medical Applications - Modern Meadow is a company that is using biofabrication techniques to make leather and thereby help reduce our dependency on animal agriculture. Biofabricated meat is another potential application.
- Functional Tissues and Organs - An interesting thought presented by Prof. Rashid Bashir is that replacing organs with matched constructs may not be optimal - we may be able to develop biological entities that get the job done without necessarily replicating every aspect of the organ being replaced. A similar thought is to to use biological materials to do engineering tasks. The challenge with this approach is living cells need to be kept alive - this is easier done when the fabricated entity is part of a living system, but harder to do when it is independent of one.
- Full Organ Replacement - Replicating an organ in all its detail: structurally and functionally - WFIRM has done this for a few organs that they consider Level 1-3 in terms of complexity (see Figure 1). Level 4 organs (like the heart) are at the moment exceedingly challenging due to their needs for high vascularity and large size.

It Takes a Village (and a Vivarium)
Imagine this is the early 2000s and you are tasked with establishing a center dedicated to accelerating the progress of regenerative medicine. What are the parts this center needs to house? This was probably what Dr. Anthony Atala and others were working out prior to establishing WFIRM in 2004. To give you a sense of what goes on in WFIRM today, here is a (partial) list of the different rooms/groups we visited on our tour: decellularization, imaging, tissue maturation, bioprinting, electrospinning, lab-on-a-chip, direct writing, vivarium that cares for animals (mice, ferrets, sheep, pigs, dogs - beagles to be specific, and "non-human primates") and a cleanroom for pre-clinical studies. Add administrative, outreach and regulatory staff. Today, about 450 people work at WFIRM and many more collaborate. Going into this conference, I was well aware this field was an inter-disciplinary one. The tour opened my eyes to just how many interdependent parts there are that make an end-to-end solution possible, some more interdisciplinary in nature than others and just how advantageous it must be to have all these capabilities under one roof dedicated to a larger mission instead of spread across a large university campus, serving many masters."I Have a Hammer, Where is the Nail?"
I will be honest - I justified my interest in biofabrication on the very dubious basis of my experience with 3D printing, a long standing interest in the life sciences that I had hitherto suppressed, and the fact that I am married to a cancer researching biochemist - bioprinting was my justification for finally getting my feet (close to a) wet (lab). I suspect I am not alone in this (support group, anyone?). When I described this to the only surgeon who entertains my questions, he accurately summarized my approach in the afore mentioned hammer-nail analogy. So, armed with my hammer, I headed to the biofabrication conference seeking nails. The good news is I found a couple. As in exactly two. The bad news? See the section above - this stuff is hard and multi-faceted - and there are folks with a multi-decade head start. So for those of us not on the front lines of this work or not in college planning our next move, the question becomes how best can we serve the scientists and engineers that are already in this field. Better tools are one option, and the trade show had examples of these: companies that make bioprinters (see Figure 2 below), improved nozzles for bioprinting, clean-room alternatives, biomaterials like hydrogels, and characterization and testing equipment. But solving problems that will help the biofabrication community is another approach and there were about 5-10 posters and presentations (mine included) which attempted to do just that. What are some of the areas that could benefit from such peripheral R&D engagement? My somewhat biased feeling is that there is opportunity for bringing some of the same challenges Additive Manufacturing is going through to this area as well:- Design for Bioprinting: fully exploiting the possibilities of bioprinting - "in Silico" has made some progress with medical devices - a similar window of value exists for biofabrication due to the design freedom of 3D printing
- Modeling: Biofabrication almost always involves multi-materials, often with varying constitutive behaviors and further are in complex, time-varying environments - getting some handle on this is a precursor to item 1 above
- Challenges of Scale: This has many elements: quality control, cost, automation, data security, bio-safety. This is one of the key drivers behind the recent DOD call for an Advanced Tissue Biofabrication Manufacturing Innovation Institute and is likely to drive several projects in this space over the next 5-7 years.

The Rate-of-Progress Paradox
Finally, a more abstract point. From the sidelines, we may ask how far has the field of biofabrication come and how fast is it progressing? It is one thing to sift through media hype and reconcile it with ground realities. It is quite another to discover this conflict seemingly exists even in the trenches - there are several examples of transplanted biofabricated entities, yet there is a common refrain that we have a long way to go to doing just so. And that struck me initially as a paradox as I heard the plenary talks that were alternatingly cautious and wild - but on the very last day I started to appreciate why this was not a paradox at all, it is just the nature of the science itself. Unlike a lot of engineering paradigms, there are limits to efficiencies that can be gained in the life sciences - and once these are gained (shared resources, improved methods etc.), success in one particular tissue or organ may not make the next one progress much faster. Take Wake Forest's own commonly used approach for regenerative medicine, for example: harvest cells, culture them, build scaffold constructs, mature cells on these constructs, implant and monitor. Sounds simple, but takes 5-10 years to get to clinical implantation and another 5-10 of observation before the results are published. And just because you have shown this in one area, bladder for example, doesn't make the next one much faster at all. All the same steps have to be followed: pathways to be re-evaluated, developmental studies to be done - prior to extensive animal and clinical trials. The solution? Pursue multiple tissues/organs in parallel, follow each step diligently and be patient. Wake Forest seems to have envisioned this over a decade ago and I expect the coming decade will show a cascade of biofabrication successes hit us with increasingly boring steadiness.Concluding Thoughts
Finally, we should all be thankful to the many PhD students and post-docs from all over the world putting in the bulk of the disciplined, hard work this field demands, most of them, in my opinion, at salaries not reflective of their extensive education and societal value. We should also spare a thought for all the animals being sacrificed for this and other research, even in the context of best veterinary practices - my personal hope is that biofabrication enables us to stop all animal trials at some point in the near future - indeed, this seems to be the only technology that can. Then we can truly say with confidence, that we have first and foremost, done no harm. Thank you WFIRM, for a wonderful conference and all the work you do everyday!Arizona Bioscience Celebrates Leaders New and Old
Posted on September 22, 2016, by: Eric Miller



Seminar Notes: Medical Device Product Development for Startups, The Bitter Pill
Posted on September 19, 2016, by: Eric Miller




Phoenix Business Journal: Getting your product made: 6 suggestions for outsourcing the manufacturing of your product
Posted on September 6, 2016, by: Eric Miller

PADT Events – September 2016
Posted on September 2, 2016, by: Eric Miller

September 13: Salt Lake City, UT
Manufacturing Promotes Innovation Summit
The UMA Summit is a day long event filled with networking, guest speakers and informative information. In between speakers network with our vendor booths and see the latest products and services available for the Manufacturing Industry. PADT will be there with lots of example of 3D Printing and ready to engage on how manufacturing really does drive innovation. Check out the event page for times and an agenda.

September 15: Scottsdale, AZ ANSYS Arizona Innovation Conference
ANSYS and PADT are pleased to announce that we be holding a user meeting in Scottsdale for the entire ANSYS use community. Join us for an informative conference on how to incorporate various productivity enhancement tools and techniques into your workflow for your engineering department. ANSYS Applications Engineers and local customers like Honeywell, Galtronics, On Semi, Ping, and Nammo Talley, will discuss design challenges and how simulation-driven product development can help engineers rapidly innovate new products. See the agenda and register here.
September 19: Phoenix, AZ Seminar: Medical Device Product Development for Startups - The Bitter Pill
We will be kicking off our Arizona Bioscience Week with this a free seminar at CEI in Phoenix with a sometimes brutally honest discussion on the reality of medical device product development. No one wants to discourage a good idea, and entrepreneurs make it a long way before someone sits them down and explains how long and expensive the engineering of a medical device product is. In this one hour seminar PADT will share the hard and cold realities of the process, not to discourage people, but to give them the facts they need. Get the details and register here.
September 21-22: Minneapolis, MN Medical Design & Manufacturing Minneapolis
PADT Medical will have a booth with our partner Innosurg at this premier event for medical device development. For 22 years, Medical Design & Manufacturing Minneapolis has been the medtech innovation, communication, and solution epicenter of the Midwest. Now over 600 suppliers strong, and with more than 5,000 industry professionals in attendance, the event provides the solutions, education, and partnerships you simply won’t find anywhere else. Learn more here. And if you are attending, please stop by and say hello, we are in booth 1643.
September 21: Phoenix, AZ
AZBio Awards
Join PADT and others for this annual event that recognizes those that contribute to the growing AZ BioTech community. The awards will be made by PADT's 3D Printing team again this year. Stop by our table to say hello. Register here.

September 21 & 22: Phoenix, AZ White Hat Investor Conference
The West was won by innovators, investors, and prospectors who understood the value of discovery and accepted the challenge of investing in new frontiers. PADT will be joining others in the investment community to meet with and hear from companies (32 are signed up to present right now) in the Bioscience space and to also share ideas and network. Registration for this special event can be found here.
September 30: Albuquerque, NM
New Mexico Tech Council: Experience IT NM Conference
Geek out on all things technology. The New Mexico Tech community will gather the best and the brightest entrepreneurs, technicians, hackers, and tech fans for presentations, talks, meet-ups, and parties; all to highlight the vibrant tech community in our city. The Conference takes place on the final day of a week of events, and will focus on HR, CRM, Manufacturing, and Creative concerns of the tech community with panels and presentations. PADT's Eric Miller will be presenting in two "MakeIT" sessions.
Learn more here.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016 – 1:00 PM AZ/PDT, 12:00 PM MDT Investigating Signal Integrity: How to find problems before they find you Register |
Thursday, September 29, 2016 – 4:00 PM AZ/PDT, 3:00 PM MDT SAE Webinar: Additive Manufacturing: From Prototyping to Production Parts Register |
On the Biocompatibility of PolyJet MED610
Posted on August 2, 2016, by: Dhruv Bhate, PhD
Is PolyJet MED610 truly biocompatible? And what does that mean anyway?
What does it mean for a Material to be Biocompatible?
A definition by Williams (The Williams Dictionary of Biomaterials, 1999) is in order: "Biocompatibility is the ability of a material to perform with an appropriate host response in a specific application." So if PolyJet MED610 is to be called biocompatible, we must ask - what application do we have in mind? Fortunately, the supplier has a recommendation.
Supplier Claims
MED610 was launched by Objet in 2011 (Objet was acquired by Stratasys in 2012) as a biocompatible material, ideal for "applications requiring prolonged skin contact of more than 30 days and short-term mucosal-membrane contact of up to 24 hours". Stratasys claims that parts printed according to Objet MED610 Use and Maintenance Terms were evaluated for biocompatibility in accordance with standard "DIN EN ISO 10993-1: 2009, Biological Evaluation of Medical Devices-Part 1: Evaluation and testing within a risk management process. This addresses cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, delayed hypersensitivity, and USP plastic Class VI, which includes the test for irritation, acute systemic toxicity and implantation". Unfortunately, the actual data from the biocompatibility study conducted by Objet have not been made publicly available. It is important to remember that Stratasys publishes a "Use and Maintenance Terms" document that details the steps needed not just to clean the part after printing, but also on the proper setup of the machine for ensuring best chances of meeting biocompatibility requirements. These are published online at this link and include a 3 hour soak in a 1-percent NaOH solution, a 30 min soak in IPA and multiple water jet rinses, among other steps. In other words, the claimed biocompatibility of MED610 is only valid if these instructions are followed. These steps are primarily driven by the need to completely remove supports and any support-residue, but it is not clear if this is needed if a part can be printed without supports. Given such strong process dependencies, it is only to be expected that Stratasys provide a disclaimer at the end of the document clarifying that the users of their machines are responsible for independently validating biocompatibility of any device they make with MED610. The next question is: have there been any relevant published, independent studies that have used MED610? In my search, I could only find two instances, which I discuss below.Primary Human Cells Response (In Vitro)
In a recent (January 2016) study published in the Journal of Medical and Biological Engineering, Schmelzer et al. studied the response of primary human cells to four 3D printed materials in vitro: ABS, PC, PLA and MED610 - the only such study I could find. All samples instead went through a 100% ethanol brief rinse and were washed 5 times with de-mineralized water - this seems like a less stringent process than what the supplier recommends (3 hour 1-percent NaOH solution soak, 30 minutes IPA soak and 10 times waterjet blasting) but was designed to be identical across all the materials tested. There were some very interesting findings:- Different cells had different responses:
- MED610 had the most negative impact on cell viability for keratinocytes (epidermal cells that produce keratin) - and the only material that showed statistically significant difference from the control.
- For bone marrow mesenchymal (stem) cells, a different effect was observed: direct culture on ABS and PC showed significant growth (7X compared to control) but MED610 and PLA showed no significant effect
- Surface Roughness influences cell attachment and proliferation:
- In agreement with other work, the authors showed that while rougher surfaces promote initial cell attachment, subsequent cell proliferation and overall cell numbers are higher on smoother surfaces. The MED610 samples had rougher surfaces than the FDM samples (possibly due to the use of the "matte" finish option) and could be one of the contributors to the observed negative effects on cell viability, along with the leached contents from the specimen.
Glaucoma Drainage Device (In Vivo, Rabbit studies)
A group of Australian researchers published a 2015 paper where they designed and used PolyJet MED610 to manufacture a Glaucoma Drainage Device (GDD). They selected PolyJet because of its ability to resolve very fine details that they needed for the device. Importantly, the purpose of this study was to assess the effect of different design parameters on the effectiveness of the device (relieving intraocular pressure). The device was implanted into rabbit eyeballs where it remained for up to 4 weeks. The devices were printed on a Connex 350 PolyJet machine, after which the supports were removed from the devices with a water jet and "were repeatedly washed and inspected for consistency and integrity." Tubes were attached with Silicone adhesive and the entire assembly was then "washed and sterilized with a hospital-grade hydrogen peroxide system before use". The researchers did not examine the cellular and extracellular reactions in great detail, but did conclude that the reactions were similar between the MED610 device and the more standard polypropylene injection-molded device. A short video recorded by some of the researchers as part of a Bioprinting course also provides some details into the 3D printing aspects of the work done.Concluding Thoughts
In conclusion, the question I posed at the start of this post (Is PolyJet MED610 truly biocompatible?) is too simplistic. A process and a material together are not sufficient - there are procedures that need to be defined and controlled and further and more importantly, biocompatibility itself has to be viewed in the context of the application and the specific toxicity and interaction demands of that application. And that brings us to our key takeaways:- MED610 is only recommended at best for applications requiring prolonged skin contact of more than 30 days and short-term mucosal-membrane contact of up to 24 hours and there is no data to dispute the suppliers claim that it is biocompatible in this context once all recommended procedures are implemented
- The work done by Australian researchers in using PolyJet MED610 for devoloping their Glaucoma Drainage Device in animal trials is perhaps the best example of how this material and the technology can be pushed further for evaluating designs and hypothesis in vivo when really fine features are needed. Stratasys's FDM PC-ISO or ABS M30i materials, or other FDM extrusion capable materials like PLA, PCL and PLGA may be better options when the resolution allows - but this is a topic for a follow-on blog post.
- More in vitro work needs to be done to extend the work done by Schmelzer et al., which suggests that MED610 potentially has leachables that do impact cell viability negatively. Specifically, effects of surface finish ("matte" vs "gloss") and sterilization on cell viability is a worthwhile follow-on step. In the interim, MED610 is expected to perform well for mucosal membrane contact under 24 hours (and why this is a great technology for dental guides and other temporary in-mouth placement).
References
- Stratasys Bio-compatible Materials Page: http://www.stratasys.com/materials/polyjet/bio-compatible
- PolyJet MED610 Data Sheets: http://www.stratasys.com/materials/material-safety-data-sheets/polyjet/dental-and-bio-compatible-materials
- Schmelzer, E., Over, P., Gridelli, B., & Gerlach, J. (2016). Response of Primary Human Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stromal Cells and Dermal Keratinocytes to Thermal Printer Materials In Vitro. Journal of Medical and Biological Engineering, 36, 153-167.
- Ross C, Pandav S, Li Y, et al. Determination of Bleb Capsule Porosity With an Experimental Glaucoma Drainage Device and Measurement System. JAMA Ophthalmol.2015;133(5):549-554. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2015.30.
- Glaucoma case study in online course on Bioprinting, University of Woolongong, Future Learn, https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/bioprinting/3/steps/87168
Do you have an Internet of Things Strategy? PADT Can Help
Posted on May 25, 2016, by: Eric Miller
"It is not just a trend, it is a Tsunami. One day you will wake up and see a giant wave headed your way, and that wave will be the Internet of Things!"
This was the opening line from a presentation given by the VP of sales for a major engineering software company. It got my attention because it wasn't hype or hyperbole. He was just pointing out the obvious. Over the past two years the signs have been there. Smart devices will connected to the internet, and older devices will be made smart and then connected. Those that don't, will no longer be competitive.
It is not all about smart thermostats. Far from it. I went to IoT world in San Jose last week and saw a lot of people scrambling to find their solution. And a few that found them. The best example was an older letter stamping machine, you can guess at the manufacturer, that plugged a modular device from Electric Imp in to their controller and boom - they were connected. Some back end programming and they now had a competitive IoT device.
It is time to define and execute on your IoT strategy
When we visit customers, we will often ask them what their IoT Strategy is. The answers vary from "we don't really think our products have an IoT play" to existing products on the market. The focus in the media is on consumer IoT products, but the bigger push right now is for industrial Internet, where machines used in manufacturing, energy generation, raw material extraction, and processing are smart and connected.
Customers from consumers to other companies will be requiring the benefits of IoT devices as they look to replace older hardware. That is why every company that makes physical products needs to develop an IoT strategy.
PADT Can Help
We have been helping our customers define and implement their approach to IoT well, since before it was called the Internet of Things. From assisting semiconductor companies that make MEMS sensors to making smart medical devices we are plugged in to what is needed to make IoT work.

- My cat didn’t preheat the oven: Is your company ready for the Internet of Things?
- Sensors and controls: Making a product smart enough for the Internet of Things
- Connectivity: What makes the Internet of Things a big deal
- How to deal with all that data from your Internet of Things device
- Security: This is the biggest challenge for the Internet of Things


Make sure you subscribe to PADT's email list so you don't miss future Events
Talking is the Best Approach
We hope that you find all of the material above, and the information we will provide in the coming months useful. But they are no substitute for giving us a call or sending us an email and setting up a face-to-face to talk about your IoT strategy and device development needs. If you are doing the work in-house, we have the hardware and software tools you need to be successful. If you need outside help, you won't find engineers with more applicable experience. Give us a call at 1-800-293-PADT or email info@padtinc.com.
Synergy in Action, or How PADT is More than the Sum of its Parts
Posted on May 10, 2016, by: Andrew Miller

But what does any of that mean?
When a PADT product development customer meets us for the first time, he or she may be shown a slide that looks like this:
Ok, but still: what does any of that mean?
A longtime customer of PADT’s product development group recently ran into an urgent problem without a clear path to a solution. Their manufacturing partner called them and said that a particular subassembly in their design will cost three times more than expected, which would raise the price of the product above the maximum the market would bear. PADT was presented with the problem: how do we reduce the subassembly cost by 66% while maintaining overall performance, and how do we confidently select a solution in under a week? PADT’s three engineering groups jumped in to help. The Product Development group held a brainstorming session and came out with two adjustments to bring overall cost down. First, the subassembly of three bonded unique steel parts would be replaced by a single injection molded plastic part. This change reduces component cost to within the target, but also significantly reduces the final assembly’s structural integrity.


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