“Dad moved to California from New York back then and was a sales representative for a company working in the balancing field,” says Robert Pernice, Charles’ son and acting president of the company. “He saw a need for a company offering balancing services to the aerospace industry and realized it gave him an opportunity to form his own business in a unique niche. He took the opportunity, and we’ve been at it every since.”

Polynetics owns its own 11,000-sq-ft building and leases out 4,000 sq ft of it. In the remaining 7,000 sq ft the company operates a solid line up of precision equipment, including 3 and 4-axis mills, precision turning centers, honing equipment, and 5 Hoffman balancers with capacities ranging from a few ounces to 1500 lbs. The balancers produce about 30% of the company’s revenues.
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“But even with all our equipment, it wasn’t enough,” Pernice says. “Some of our cryogenic customers have been asking for very complex machining, and I was having to turn it down. However, I knew I could capture a lot of that work, if I had 5-axis capability. So, I recently bit the bullet and bought a new Deckel Maho DMU 60 monoBlock 5-axis milling mill. It was a big move for us, but we’ve already booked a fair amount of work for it and prospects are good for more, especially once we let our customers know we have it. We bought the machine because we wanted to expand our capabilities, and it has. It’s been on the floor only two months, but it has already opened new horizons for us.”

Now that he has made the big move to 5-axis machining, how does Pernice see the future for his company? “Well, we have a really nice niche with our combination of balancing and machining,” he says. “And now that we have the DMU 60, I predict our company will grow rapidly from here on in. I have work booked already, and once I let our customers know of our new capability, I expect all the work we can handle. My long-term goal is to grow, and this machine is our first big step to getting there.”
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