Abstract: Electrically driven rapid vaporization of thin metallic foils is used to conduct impulse-based metal working operations such as dynamic compaction of metal powders, collision welding, embossing, shearing, shape calibration, and closed-die forming. A metal body is sheared from a metal sheet using foil actuators operating at input electrical energies from 4 kJ to 10 kJ. During the impulse shearing operation, the sheared plugs were accelerated up to velocities of 1400 m/s within a few millimeters of travel distance. The sheared plugs were used as pistons to compress milled commercially pure titanium (CP-Ti) and Ti-6AI-4V alloy (Ti-6-4) powders, both of which had tap densities of approximately 25-28%. After the process, compaction in the range of greater than 90% was observed. When compared to a quasistatic cold compaction process, a significant gain in densification with same pressures was observed.