Toray Industries, Inc.

Ryota Nakao

Yasuhiro Sato

Tamotsu Suzuki

A fiber placement device that includes a placement surface on which a reinforcing fiber tow is placed and stacked; a tow arranging mechanism which presses and places the reinforcing fiber tow against and on the placement surface; and a heating mechanism which is configured to heat the placement surface. In one placement cycle, the tow arranging mechanism presses a group of the reinforcing fiber tows against the placement surface heated in advance by the heating mechanism, moves by a predetermined length in a first axial direction to glue and fix the group of the reinforcing fiber tows onto the placement surface, and move the placement surface in a second axial direction which substantially intersects the first axial direction.

Fiber placement device

The present invention aims to provide a sheet-shaped reinforcing fiber substrate having shear deformability to conform to a three dimensional shape and restraining the generation of waste pieces to realize a large improve in the yield of reinforcing fibers and a reduction in production cost, and also provide a production method therefor. The sheet-shaped reinforcing fiber substrate has a layered structure containing N layers (N being an integer of 3 or more) produced by arranging a plurality of reinforcing fiber bundles with appropriate lengths and meets the requirements (1) to (5) given below:

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Otsu, Japan

Ryota Nakao