We are Wilson Manufacturing.

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Our Promise

We’ve been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible since 1979.

At Wilson, we don’t accept the limitations of what’s always been done when it comes to crafting precision rotary tooling. When you partner with us, our experts will listen to you and understand your unique challenges before creating a solution that WORKS. Our inquisitive approach helps us deliver seemingly simple solutions to problems that leave other manufacturers scratching their heads or shrugging their shoulders saying, “Ah, well.” We care about you and we care about our work—so we’ll stick with you until your problem is solved.

Envisionuity

Vision for the future. Ingenuity that brings it into the now.

In our 40-year history, we’ve been pushing ourselves by constantly thinking, “There’s got to be a better way.” This innovation mindset is what we here at Wilson call Envisionuity. It’s that spirit that pushes us to be better and challenge the status quo by asking ourselves how we dream it to be, rather than how we think it could be. This spirit of Envisionuity is what drives us to re-engineer everything we do, from the way we communicate with you to the process for handling your order. Discover how a different kind of thinking inspires us to re-engineer what it means to work with a rotary tooling manufacturer.

Our Story

Over the past four decades, Wilson Manufacturing has grown from humble beginnings to what’s now a global presence, and we’re not stopping anytime soon.

1979
Wilson Manufacturing is born.

Father-and-son team John and Matt Wilson founded Wilson Manufacturing in their garage, starting out building custom punching equipment.

1980s
Clyde the Shop Cat

Clyde was our shop denizen for many years. He was aggressively affectionate and would bite if he didn't receive pets! He also famously destroyed the interior of John Wilson's prized Cadillac when he was scared by its loud sound system.

1982
Moving on up.

Wilson moved into a new facility on Vandeventer Ave. in St. Louis. The building had previously been home to a flat stamp nail engineering company who secured several important patents. Our capacity expanded tremendously from a few hundred to 15,000 sq ft of space.

1985
Wilson goes digital.

We introduced computers in 1985, a huge leap forward in technology and efficiency. Our first programs were stored on 8-inch floppy disks that held only about 1.2 MB per disk. At this time, we began modifying our machines, figuring out how to integrate them with software, and doing our own custom programming.

1986
Putting Black Hawk helicopters in the air.

The U.S. government turned to Wilson to create rotor caps for its Black Hawk helicopters when no other machine shop was able to supply them. Matt Wilson worked around the clock for weeks on end to figure out how to machine them, eventually delivering the job right on time.

1997
Continued expansion

Wilson Manufacturing moves St. Louis, MO operations again, this time tripling our production capacity moving to our Green Park facility. We immediately started buying available property surrounding the building as we had a vision for continued growth.

1999
Machine sharpening becomes a reality.

This year represents a big milestone not only for Wilson, but for our entire industry because we introduced the very first machine sharpened rotary die. Up until this point, all rotary dies had to be sharpened by hand, which limited the accuracy of tolerances that could be achieved. In 1999, that all changed, and we continue to refine the process today through technology and automation.

2003
Our products begin to flex.

We started production in our flexible tooling division, which has continued to grow ever since.

2007
More room to grow.

We completed construction on and moved into our St. Louis expansion, which increased our facility space to 90,000 sq ft.

2014
Going international.

To better serve our growing customer base in Canada, we opened our Toronto office and production facility in 2014.

2017
Continued growth.

We opened our Chicago sales office as demand for our tooling continued to grow across the United States.

2018
Our flexible division gets its own home.

We moved our flexible division into its own 18,000 sq ft facility, increasing our production capacity for both flexible and solid tooling

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