prior to laying a cutting means 19 may be present for this at a suitable location and have a suitable design the material to be laid 5 37 which is fed on the inlet side may form a contiguous web especially a formed web from which said material or formed web layers 9 are separated while forming individual pieces this separation may take place in front of the laying unit 16 17 or within the laying unit 16 17 the material to be laid 5 37 may have the same design or different designs in the exemplary embodiment being shown the material to be laid 5 which is arriving from a first formed web generator 3 especially from a carder is a fibrous formed web which has a cotton wool like form and consists of short cut fibers so called stable fibers the fibrous materials can be selected as desired they may be e g industrial fibers especially carbon fibers fibers made of plastics or natural fibers from cotton or the like the fibrous formed web 5 may also contain other additional materials e g metal filaments or the like as is illustrated in fig1 and 6 there may be a prevailing fiber orientation 6 in the material to be laid 5 especially the fibrous formed web for example the majority of fibers have here essentially the same direction component which is directed e g along the direction of feed 7 or in the longitudinal direction of the formed web it is not necessary for all fibers to have the same alignment to be in parallel to one another they may assume oblique positions and mutually hook.