A progressive die assembly and a method for manufacturing lamina stacks from a plurality of separate strips of stock material. The die assembly includes a plurality of feed pathways for the material strips, each feed pathway having an associated punch set. Each punch set includes one or more punches for stamping lamina features in the strip, as well as at least one blanking punch for blanking individual laminas from the strips. The die assembly additionally includes a choke assembly which is adapted to receive laminas which are blanked from each of the material strips by the blanking punches.