News and Developments

Back to News

BOMAC Harnesses Machine Power
By Casey J. Dickinson

EAST SYRACUSE, NY - Without controls, even the greatest industrial machines are useless.  Bomac, Inc. designs, builds, installs, and repairs the controls that let companies do everything from make paper to wrap candy bars.  Simply explained, Bomac's controls allow power to reach machines at the right time so they can complete industrial tasks.

Founded in 1959 by two former Carrier employees whose first names "Bob" and Mac" combined to make BOMAC, the company is currently owned by Jeff Randolph, who also serves as its president.

Bomac began building controls for Carrier products after the air-conditioning giant decided to outsource the task in the late 1950s. Expanding from its air-conditioning roots, Bomac moved into other industrial fields.  In the 1970s, the company built integrated industrial controls, and by the 1980s, Bomac added engineering skills. Today, the company can take a client's project from idea to reality, says Charles Lincoln, sales and marketing manager for Bomac.

One of Bomac's latest projects involved building the controls for a restored Iraqi water plant.

Bomac has a 21,000 square foot headquarters building in the Town of Dewitt, adjacent to the New York State Thruway as well as a 4,000 square foot Elmira office to serve Southern Tier customers, such as Corning, Inc.  The vast majority of the company's work comes from outside Central New York, says Randolph.  Some of its customers are in Asia, and the company's service staff is well traveled, he adds.

The Syracuse office as a 12,000 square foot manufacturing and assembly space where controls are built, tested, and repaired.  Workers use tools ranging from small soldering irons to build circuit boards up to banks of electric motors that stand in for industrial machines.  Bomac engineers use electric motors to simulate the workings of giant industrial machines, Lincoln explains. Testers use computer monitoring equipment to ensure that a control panel will operate as planned after it is installed. Control panels range in size from small boxes to room-filling models that incorporate numerous gauges and switches. The Elmira plant has 3,000 square feet of assembly space.

Assembly tools, Lincoln explains, are typically more durable than their controls. The company upgrades control systems and integrates the machinery with newer computer control systems.  Bomac has several older machine tools currently in its shop undergoing control upgrades.  Some of the machines the company uses have been in service for decades.

"We've done some project where we've had to replace vacuum-tube-based controls", he says.

Bomac serves a wide range of industrial sectors, Lincoln explains. The company has built controls for customers around the world over the past few decades. Cement, hydropower, glass, pharmaceutical, and paper companies all use Bomac-built controls. Its customer list includes Anheuser-Busch Companies, Alcan, EI DuPont, Xerox, Eastman Kodak, and many other names.

Bomac has taken a proactive approach to procuring spare parts for some of its customers in advance.  A special storage area holds spare parts that are no longer generally available. The parts come from industrial machines that have been upgraded.  The extra parts will allow some customers to put off capital-intensive equipment upgrades and keep manufacturing lines running continuously.