In the early days of composites manufacturing, the materials for building fiber-reinforced plastic/composite parts were laid into molds by hand. Hand layup is still common in the industry, but automated processes — notably pultrusion, filament winding, automated tape layup (ATL) and others — have been developed along the way to replace or streamline manual operations.
Pultrusion was one of the first automated processes. Patented in 1959 by W. Brandt Goldsworthy (1915-2003), pultrusion is an automated, computer-controlled process for manufacturing linear, constant-cross section, fiber-reinforced composite profile parts quickly, consistently and endlessly, and then reliably cutting them into pre-programmed lengths.
