Apparatus for continuously manufacturing an elongated reinforced shaped article

An apparatus for continuously manufacturing an elongated shaped article of a foamed resin reinforced by a multiplicity of continuous and parallel fibers, said apparatus comprising:

• (a) means for arranging a multiplicity of advancing continuous and parallel fibers into a sheet-like bundle of fibers;
• (b) means adjacent and downstream of (a) for impregnating the sheet-like bundle of fibers with a liquid foamable resin;
• (c) means adjacent and downstream of (b) for gathering the resultant resin impregnated sheet-like bundle of fibers into a gathered bundle of continuous fibers having said resin dispersed therein;
• (d) a movable passage adjacent and downstream of (c) for receiving the gathered bundle of fibers from (c), the walls of which contact and move with the gathered bundle of fibers to form and shape said gathered bundle of fibers into the elongated shaped article, said movable molding passage (i) comprising three or more endless belts facing one another in parallel relationship and (ii) having a cross-section perpendicular to the direction of movement of said bundle of fibers corresponding to the cross-section of the desired shaped article;
• said movable molding passage further comprising a tube which surrounds and is contiguous to at least a portion of each of the runs of the endless belts which comprise the walls of the movable molding passage for preventing outward deflection of the runs during foaming of the liquid foamable resin, the number of sides of the tube corresponding to the number of endless belts;
• and
• (e) means adjacent the downstream of (d) for extracting said elongated shaped article from said nolding passage.