Case Studies

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bo-mar has established a reputation for providing true turnkey solutions. Our staff has years of experience in designing, prototyping, and custom fabricating projects of all sizes. In 2001, a customer asked bo-mar to assist in evolving an innovative idea into a commercially available product. This product consisted of a gas grill, an ice chest, and music all combined to maximize the owner’s tailgating experience. There was an existing prototype that was a completely welded assembly, which was not manufacturable.

bo-mar redesigned the unit to be mass-produced and fabricated several details to increase its marketability. Our team also custom fabricated a smaller economical version of the product. bo-mar ’s design and fabrication of this project assisted in the launch of a company that still sells this product today.

The Stretch Wrap Machine is the type of project bo-mar excels at, bringing a concept design to production. Our customer approached us with the concept of the stretch wrap machine, yet did not have the engineering capabilities to develop the concept further. Our experienced staff was able to fabricate the product into a viable commercial product.

bo-mar was involved in all steps of the manufacturing process, from generating the drawings using Pro/ENGINEER to shipping the completed product to end-users. We also designed two large units to accommodate larger wrapping issues and produced operations manuals for all stretch wrap machines fabricated. As volumes needed to meet demand increased, the inventors sold the rights to the bo-mar -developed product, and it is now manufactured in higher volume overseas and sold by another company.

An international client asked bo-mar to improve upon an Australian dynamometer design, converting the specifications, components and materials from metric standards to American standards for domestic sourcing. Additionally, the client needed bo-mar to optimize the design for manufacturability. bo-mar successfully met the conversion goals and provided several innovative design improvements that facilitated manufacturability and assembly. In the end, bo-mar also managed to reduce production costs. The dynamometer design bo-mar developed is sold by Dyno Dynamics and is shipped internationally.

bo-mar currently produces two Automatic Teller Machines they developed. This was another case where bo-mar was approached with a rough prototype and a series of goals, and bo-mar leveraged their product development experience into some innovative designs.  The customer wanted a modular ATM that could be expanded, a standard product and a double-wide.  We made modular components so we would be able to easily go from the standard to the double. Additionally, these machines can accommodate different facades and canopies so that the units can be uniquely branded.

The customer also had us design a cylindrical design. We built a 36 inch diameter cylinder about six foot tall.  They are placed in rental spaces, like strip malls.  This is actually a pretty unique shape for an ATM.  The door is the tough part.  It has shapes and features that are not easily made.  We came up with a way to make the main body out of two parts. It’s really a big weldment.  The customer came to us with goals, sketches, ideas and a rough prototype they were not happy with and bo-mar helped them develop it all.  Since then we’ve built hundreds of them. Now the challenge is improving the design and manufacturing process each time we do a batch.

Amtrak Food Service Elevator

In 2007, bo-mar was asked to completely redesign the antiquated food service elevators for the double-decker Amtrak Superliners.  We literally reengineered their entire elevator and made it a cabling system instead of a chain-drawn system.  After several years, there has been virtually no maintenance required.  We repackaged their existing food service elevator using new technology, like magnetic limit switches.  The cable is so quiet, staff members don’t even hear it arrive.  This was a huge improvement over the previous design.  In the old days, the chain system was so loud, you would hear it come up the shoot before it would hit the bell.  Now the elevator arrives silently and triggers an arrival lamp.  The cable system is not only quieter, it requires little to no maintenance, unlike the previous chain design.

Elevator Cable Motors

The food service elevators go in the Amtrak, coast-to-coast, double-decker Superliners so the food service elevator is about 15 foot high. It brings the food from the lower level where it’s prepared up to the upper level where it is served. To do that, it must handle 500 lbs of weight.  We have two designs. One design uses an aircraft cart and other handles trays. We use the same motor, gear drives and other components so that everything is enterchangable between the two designs. Our product also installs about 40% faster than the previous design. We optimized everything and created two compact packages.

Elevator Wiring

Part of our challenge was to fix all the problems that the original firm had created and at the same time introduce numerous innovations and improvements. The previous designer had workmanship issues, time delivery issues and functional issues.  We have had a great success rate on our units in the field; they’re reliable and easy to maintain. Our team really thought through the issues, from manufacturing, installation, maintenance, reliability, and user interface. This was a great project for us, and Amtrak is very pleased with the quality and price point.  This is a typical kind of project we do for the rail industry, and this is really a great example of the kind of quality product development bo-mar consistently delivers.

Not as simple as it looks!

Custom Die Tooling

Medical metal fabrication requires precision fabrication and the highest level of quality. We were challenged by a company with drawings of an oral surgery brace and asked to mass produce the product. With this project, bo-mar needed to overcome a big obstacle, the braces’ detailed bends. Our solution was to create a unique set of tooling to fabricate the reverse bend.

The manufacturing process for this project was extremely elaborate. Because the design of the brace required a reverse bend, the piece could not be made out of sheet metal, and it had to be cut from the waterjet. The braces’ multi-step fabrication process consisted of machining, press brake forming, more machining, micro welding, a passive die process, laser etching, and finally assembly. Although the part looks simple, there are many crucial steps in order to bring this product from paper to completion. Ultimately, we were able to construct the tooling to mass produce the oral surgery braces, making the fabrication process more efficient and cost-effective. We continue to produce these parts for our customer today.

This project was another case where bo-mar inherited the job from a vendor who had the job awarded to them, but were unable to deliver. They were asked to completely redesign the bunk system. They delivered their design a year late, and the bunks were totally unusable. We were hired to salvage that design and make it functional and maintainable. We did that for two car sets of bunks. We completely redesigned their redesign using what parts we could so they wouldn’t be a total loss. After that proof-of-concept, we were asked to build another 300 bunks based on our design. Our design has had little or no failure in the field.

Sleeper Bunk Shells Awaiting Assembly

These bunks get a lot of use and abuse because people are in and out of them every day.  In sleeper cars today, everything is self-contained in your room which is about 8 foot long and four foot deep.  It has a toilet, a sink, seats for two people and sleeping compartments for two people.  That’s the cubical you live in when you buy a sleeper unit.  The bunk folds up out of the way during the day when it’s not being utilized, and then at night it folds down for the room occupants.  We put a detente pattern in the bunk which helps it stop at 180 degrees up and then down at 45 degrees and then down 90 degrees when it is being slept in.  The detente that holds the bunk in place is like a spring loaded pin that snaps into each detente.  When you open it up mechanically, it moves out of that detente and it’s ready for that next detente.  We put a counter-balance spring in it so that it’s not too heavy when it comes down, it sort of levitates.  The detente pattern is something new. In the old days, they had a mechanical arm that held the bunk down.  In the new design, the bunks are aluminum so they are light-weight.  The bunks were stainless steel which is heavy, so users were fighting the weight.  We came up with the mechanism that is very user-friendly and easy to open and close.  It has an aircraft cable instead of mechanical linkages.  We’ve built hundreds of units now, and they want to outfit the entire fleet with our design because it is so easy to use.

The other thing Amtrak loves about the bo-mar design is that we took the labor out of the installation process. In the old days, if the space for the bunk was not perfectly square, it would be a nightmare getting it installed. Our design is self-contained and not dependent on the old connection points. We reduced their install time down by at least 80% from what it was prior to this design change. Previously, everything had to be perfectly aligned to catch all of the mounting points. If something got bent or out of kilter, nothing worked. Ours is independent of all of that. You can hang it on a crooked wall. Before you couldn’t hang it on there, you would have to shim it out to make it work. To make it worse, one room’s guts relied on the back of the next room’s guts. There was a thin wall in between.  They had to mount bunks on both sides at the same time.  If one wall tipped, they were both bad. We eliminated this entire mess; we just need a wall to hang on. We had to do a 8g load destruction test on our design and hang 1,300 pounds of weight on it. We had to go through a complete testing process before we could put it out in the field. The bo-mar design passed everything with flying colors.  Our design is lighter, easier to install, user friendly, less expensive, and stronger than the old design–with fewer parts.  Because of our success on this project, Amtrak has entrusted bo-mar with all the maintenance on their old bunks. bo-mar has become Amtrak’s bunk specialists. They bring them in, we retrofit and troubleshoot and at least get the old units functional again.  Amtrak is planning to retrofit all of the sleep cars with the bo-mar  design.

Project: Attack Barrier Plate

Attack Barrier Plates being Assembled

Deploys in less than a second!

When the trespassers attempt an unauthorized entry and hit this at 55mph, they're done!

bo-mar has been contracted to fabricate several defense projects. The Attack Barrier Plate project has been the most elaborate project manufactured for the defense industry. This project was a fabricated metal assembly that military bases and other high security facilities installed to defend against entry by unauthorized vehicles. The Attack Barrier Plates are embedded in concrete at entrances, near guard shacks. Linked is a video of the barrier plate being tested. This clip shows a fifteen thousand pound truck colliding into the barrier plate at 55 mph. Subsequently, the truck stopped dead in its tracks. The plate on top is 3/4 inch steel. It’s 9 foot by 4 foot and deploys in less than one second.

When the customer approached us about the project there were already drawings and plans for the barrier plates.  However, our experienced staffs of engineers and designers were able to modify the plans and change a few fabrication techniques.  The Attack Barrier Plates were being fabricated by iron workers before bo-mar became involved with the project.  The end product was rougher, and less precise in the way it had been manufactured.  We were able to use one of our three Mazak Lasers Cutters to cut the plates.  A laser machine cuts material more efficient and precise than a plasma cutter would be able to.  Also, laser cutting insures that the size of every piece that is cut and fabricated will be the exact same size.  The installation process of the barrier plates goes much smoother if the product is consistently manufactured.  All in all, our cohesive team was able to make the Attack Barrier Plate a more dependable and efficient product.