Tailored fiber placement (TFP) is a textile manufacturing technique based on the principle of sewing for a continuous placement of fibrous material for composite components. The fibrous material is fixed with an upper and lower stitching thread on a base material. Compared to other textile manufacturing processes fiber material can be placed near net-shape in curvilinear patterns upon a base material in order to create stress adapted composite parts. History TFP technology was introduced in the early 1990s by the IPF Dresden. At the beginning handmade stitched reinforcement structures (preforms) were manufactured initialized by an industry inquiry about stress adapted fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) parts with a curvilinear pattern. An adaptation of this method to industrial embroidery machines, by using the sewing capabilities of those automates, was implemented in the mid-90s. The technology was named Tailored Fiber Placement, which describes the variable axial near-net-shape fibre placement capabilities. Nowadays, the Tailored Fiber Placement is already in several companies a well-established textile technology for dry preform manufacturing applying TFP machines by the manufacturer TAJIMA. Principle of the technology Based on embroidery machinery used in the garment textile industry, the machines have been adapted to deposit and stitch fiber roving material onto a base material. Roving material, mostly common carbon fibers, from about 3,000 up to 50,000 filaments can be applied. The preform is produced continuously by the placement of a single roving. The roving material pulled off a spool is guided by a pipe which is positioned in front of the stitching needle. The roving pipe and the frame, where the base material is fixed onto, move synchronized stepwise to perform a zigzag stitch relative to needle position. The stitching head equipped with roving spool, pipe and needle can rotate arbitrarily 360 degrees. During each stitch the upper thread is pulled through the base material and looped around the lower thread spool. Hence a double backstitch is performed. Currently, up to 800 stitches per minute can be achieved. The base material can be a 2D-textile such as woven or non-woven fabric or a matrix-compatible foil material for thermoplastic composites. The stitching path can be designed in form of a pattern either with the help of classical design embroidery software or more recently by use of 2D-CAD systems. Afterwards necessary information of the stitch positions are added to the pattern with the help of so-called punch software and finally transferred to the TFP machine.