Process guide
What Is Tailored Fiber Placement?
Tailored fiber placement (TFP) is an automated preforming process that stitches continuous reinforcement onto a carrier material along paths defined in CAD — so the fiber follows the load rather than the roll direction of a fabric.
The idea
Conventional composite parts start life as flat broadgoods — woven fabric, non-crimp fabric or prepreg — that get cut into plies and stacked. That approach inherits the fiber directions of the fabric. Where the load in the finished part does not happen to run along those directions, the laminate compensates with extra plies, which means extra weight, extra material and extra layup labour.
TFP inverts that. The reinforcement is placed where the analysis says it is needed, in the direction the analysis says it should run. The process descends from industrial embroidery: a placement head lays down a continuous tow while a stitching thread fixes it to a backing material, following a path generated directly from the CAD model. Because the tow is steered rather than cut, curved and radial fiber paths are as straightforward to produce as straight ones.
How the process runs
Raw material
Continuous carbon or glass tow, towpreg, non-crimp fabric or prepreg is fed from a creel into the placement head.
Preform production
The tow is laid onto a carrier and fixed with a stitching thread, following a path generated from the CAD model. Fiber direction, tow density and local thickness are all controlled per region.
Net-shape preform
The finished preform leaves the machine already in the shape of the part, ready to be stacked, draped and moulded — with little or no kitting or trimming.
The preform then goes into whichever moulding route the programme calls for. We build preforms optimised for prepreg layup, resin transfer moulding (RTM) and vacuum infusion.
What it changes
Less scrap. Broadgoods are cut to shape, and the material between the shapes is thrown away. A tailored preform is built up to shape, so the fiber that gets bought is largely the fiber that ends up in the part.
Less touch labour. Kitting and stacking many small plies by hand is slow and hard to repeat. Consolidating those plies into a smaller number of preforms takes hours of manual layup out of the cell, and takes variability out with it.
Fiber continuity around features. Openings, lugs and load introduction points can be formed with the fiber running around them, instead of being drilled through afterwards. See open-hole performance in composite laminates for why that distinction matters structurally.
Local reinforcement without a local ply drop. Because tow density is controlled per region, material can be added exactly where the stress field demands it, rather than adding a full ply across the whole part to satisfy one hot spot.
Materials and processes we work in
Carbon fiber and fiberglass, in tow, towpreg, non-crimp fabric and prepreg form, built into 2D and 3D geometries for prepreg layup, resin transfer moulding and vacuum infusion. Applications run across aerospace, defense, automotive, medical and industrial infrastructure.
Where the published evidence sits
TFP is not a laboratory curiosity — it has been characterised in funded, peer-reviewed and public-release research. The most useful public starting point is the U.S. Department of Energy–funded IACMI study on TFP structural performance, which we summarise in Tailored Fiber Placement for Complex Preforms.
Have a part in mind?
Send us the geometry and the load case. We will tell you whether preforming is the right answer for it.
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