Patent ID: 8403018

Claim:
Equipment for manufacturing a wearing article including an absorbent main body and a waist-belt section, the absorbent main body having an absorbent body for absorbing fluid, said equipment comprising: a plurality of units movably arranged on a unit basis for transferring a half-completed product of the wearing article along a first direction, and connecting members each of which is arranged between two adjacent units and connects the two adjacent units, wherein each of the units has a planar size in which a length in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction is longer than in the first direction, each of the units has a height and the lengths of the first direction and the second direction within a size range so that the unit is accommodable in a container according to the JIS or ISO standard, the plurality of units is configured to perform at least one of the steps of: shaping pulverized pulp into the absorbent body, sandwiching the absorbent body between a first sheet member and a second sheet member to define a continuous body of the absorbent main body, producing at least a part of a belt element constituting the waist-belt section, severing the continuous body of the absorbent main body to obtain the individual absorbent main body, affixing a pair of the belt elements to both end sections of the absorbent main body, folding the absorbent main body in two, and superposing the pair of belt elements on each others, joining the superposed belt elements at intervals at a to-be-joined portion thereof to obtain the waist-belt section, and severing the continuous body of the absorbent main body corresponding to the to-be-joined portion for each waist-belt section to obtain the wearing article, each of the units has a device and a plate member fixed to the device and supporting the from below, and each of the connecting members has end portions directly fixed to the adjacent plate members of the corresponding units.