The Blackmer® reputation for unparalleled product performance, superior service and support, innovation, and a commitment to total customer satisfaction have been a driving factor in the ethos of our organization for over 115 years. The company was founded in Petoskey, Michigan and moved to Grand Rapids in 1925. We are devoted to the people, partners, and the products that have allowed Blackmer go above and beyond with our passionate commitment to innovative technologies that positively impact the world.
Before the turn of the 20th century, a rotary pump was generally understood to be a "gear pump," consisting primarily of two meshing gears which trapped liquid between the gear teeth and the pump housing creating small sealing cavities that transported fluid as it rotated, forcing the liquid out the other side. But in 1899 R. M. Blackmer came up with a vane-type pump design that was an important departure from the old gear principle. In contrast to the flow rate from a gear pump that drops steadily as the gear teeth wear away, the loss from a vane-type pump is practically negligible. As the vanes wear away at the tips, they simply move further out of the rotor slots to self-adjust and maintain the original rate.
Blackmer couldn't have picked a better time to invent this ingenious type of pump. The advent of the automobile was giving the country a new thirst for gasoline and oil. The petroleum industry was growing by giant strides and the young firm was prepared to expand with it. The original Blackmer vane pump has fathered a family of hundreds of different pump models.
Today, Blackmer markets these pumps along with other fluid and gas technologies worldwide into a multitude of applications within the Chemical, Energy, Transport, Military, Marine, General Industrial and Oil and Gas.
