US Patent Issued to SUBARU on Nov. 4 for "Roller unit for feeding tapes, fiber placement apparatus and method of molding composite material" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,459,216, issued on Nov. 4, was assigned to SUBARU Corp. (Tokyo).

"Roller unit for feeding tapes, fiber placement apparatus and method of molding composite material" was invented by Daichi Terayama (Tokyo), Tomoyoshi Kuniya (Tokyo) and Daisuke Hirabayashi (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A roller unit aligns tapes in a width direction and feeds the aligned tapes. The tapes are made of fibers which have not been impregnated with resin or have been impregnated with the resin. The roller unit includes rollers and a support shaft. The rollers rotate by friction force between the tapes and the rollers when the rollers contact with the tape...