Thomas Vacca

It is possible to stamp to tight tolerances, as long as metal forming shops have the right tool frame, guide system, lead strip piloting, and strip progression clamping and use design for manufacturability with each tool.

Not only can the right material, coating, lubricant, and press extend the life of metal stamping tooling—toolroom management also makes a difference for metal formers.

Thomas Vacca explains special considerations for stamping silicon electrical steel.

Coatings can help your stamping tooling run longer, but you need to make sure your process is predictable and repeatable first.

Ask the Stamping Expert columnist Thomas Vacca explains how metalformers can use sensors to achieve zero miss-hits on a press.

Panel photochemical etching is an inexpensive way to fabricate a medium quantity of parts for evaluation before building a production tool.

Ask the Stamping Expert columnist Tom Vacca discusses the practicalities of meeting statistical capability on a die set.

Ask the Stamping Expert columnist Tom Vacca gives advice for skiving a pitman arm part and sizing a stamping press.

As skilled labor gets more and more difficult to find in the metal stamping sector, in-house apprenticeship programs can offer a solution.

When forming in a progressive die, blank holding pressure, press condition, and raw material all affect the ability to achieve consistent drawing results without wrinkling.

The focus of a manufacturing team should be to minimize process variation and, as a result, non-value-added tasks.

Tom Vacca presents four in-die forming designs for tweaking bends while the tool is in the press.

Tom Vacca discusses the characteristics, capabilities, advantages, and drawbacks of both destackers and coil feeders for feeding material through a transfer press line.

Continuous improvement in stamping includes upgrading tool steels and trying coatings to improve tooling life. Tom Vacca explains how to get started.