June 2026

www.padtinc.com

Featured Stories

40 Years as an Ansys User

For PADT co-owner Eric Miller, June 15th marked the 40th anniversary of using Ansys. That simple introduction to the world of FEA and simulation changed his life in unimaginable ways, including being part of PADT's founding and making friends with amazing humans around the world.

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Speeding up Stratasys FDM 3D Printing: F900 vs F3300 Printers go Head-to-Head

We've had the F3300 and F900 running side by side for a while, and we finally did what needed doing — printed the same part, same material, same settings, and let the numbers speak. Two industrial FDM workhorses, one direct comparison. If throughput and part cost matter to your operation, you'll want to see how it turned out.

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Let’s Explore the New Ansys Granta Material Picker

Ansys Zemax OpticStudio users on 2026R1 have a powerful new tool at their disposal: the Ansys Granta Material Picker. Now accessible from the Libraries tab, it lets optical designers search and filter the full optical glass catalog by index of refraction, Abbe number, thermal expansion, and more — making glass selection faster and smarter. Best of all, it's available for all OpticStudio editions at no additional license cost.

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PADT In Pictures

June saw our teams traveling around the world, with trips to Italy, Japan, and New Hampshire. We celebrated some milestones, worked closely with customers on technical advances, and volunteered at two local universities.

Our Flownex sales and support team visited users at Blue Origin. While there they got to tour the facility and see the capsule that William Shatner flew in.

PADT's Noah Ashbranner traveled to Japan for the INCOSE 2026 International Symposium. Instead of a selfie, he took a picture of the welcome post. System engineers....

PADT had a great time supporting our partners at Rapid Fusion at this year's Automate Show in Chicago. PADT's Mark Skoog and Sean Williams were representing Large Format Additive Manufacturing (LFAM).

Our Ansys busops experts, Josephine, Kathryn, and Cara, headed to New Hampshire to meet with Ansys/Synopsys on all sorts of licensing, order processing, and accounting topics.

KJ and Cynthia were joined by an Ansys colleague for another trip to Rivian, this time to focus on Ansys SPEOS related applications.

PADT hosted an event at our offices in Tempe with Ansys/Synopsys and Honeywell Aerospace for a technical review of how they use Ansys across the organization.

The Arizona Technology Council's May networking event was fantastic. PADT's co-owner Eric Miller was able to meet some new people and catch up with old friends.

PADT Co-Founder, Ward Rand, and Ted Harris visited Italy for Turbo Expo 2026. We supported both the Flownex and Ansys booths and caught up with a wide variety of our turbomachinery customers.

PADT's Eric Miller celebrated his 100th time at Venture Cafe Phoenix. Read all about it in the Phoenix Business Journal.

ASU invited PADT's Eric Miller to come help facilitate a class on prototyping. It was fun and inspirational. Read more in this LinkedIn post.

PADT engineer and UofA Alumni Joe Woodward was down in Tucson again this year to judge and hand out PADT's award for best use of prototyping. Learn more about UofA's 2026 Design Day in this article.

Customer Corner

Second Gen 6 Aircraft Accelerates Wisk’s Flight Test Program

Wisk Aero completed the first flight of its second-generation 6 autonomous eVTOL aircraft in May, expanding its flight test program in Hollister, CA. With two aircraft now actively testing, Wisk is accelerating its path to FAA certification — and has been selected to lead autonomous air taxi operations in Texas

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ARRAY Technologies Surpasses 100 GW Milestone, a Significant Company Achievement Built on Global Execution

Albuquerque-based ARRAY Technologies hit 100 gigawatts of solar tracker deliveries across 30+ countries — a milestone 34 years in the making. The New Mexico company continues investing in domestic manufacturing and expanding its product lineup to meet surging global demand for utility-scale solar energy.

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Featured Products And Services

Rapid Fusion

Medusa

With a 1.2 × 1.2 × 1.2 m build volume, Medusa delivers unmatched throughput, flexibility, and precision for demanding engineering polymers.

Medusa is a fully enclosed hybrid system that combines pellet and filament 3D printing with CNC milling in one automated unit.

Seamlessly transition between tools: pellet extruder, dual filament extruders, and CNC spindle, using an automatic tool changer. Combined with AI-driven calibration and defect detection, Medusa ensures accuracy and reliability at scale.

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Services

Additive Manufacturing Services

Additive Manufacturing (AM), is starting a paradigm shift in design and manufacturing. PADT is helping AM development and adoption by offering its AM E3T Consulting Program that will Engage you in discovering AM, Enable you to define how AM can change your business, Empower you to take on the AM adoption process, and help you Transform your business by re-inventing it using AM. We call this unique offering Additive Manufacturing E3T Consulting Services.

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Other Content Of Note

Case Study: Dynamic Modeling of a Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor During a Loss-of-Flow Event

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Harnessing the Power of Workstation GPUs for CFD Studies  

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Extraordinary Stories:

Everybody's an expert. You Just Have to Care Enough to Ask.

Watch

How Thea Energy’s Stellarator Uses Magnets to Shape Plasma for Fusion Power Plants

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AZTC Tech Focus Member Spotlight: Jessica Grant, President and Craig Jackman CEO and co-founder, Paragon IT Professionals

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