A wig has been manufactured in such a manner that a hair segment to be transplanted is folded in two, which is one by one transplanted onto a three-dimensional thick base by handwork. When one folded hair segment is transplanted on the base, it looks as if two hairs are transplanted. Several folded hair segments may be transplanted at one time.
However, such a prior art handwork is extremely inefficient. It would take two or three weeks or more to transplant 20,000 hairs, for example. When a wig is manufactured in foreign countries in order to save labor costs, it tends to increase inferior products and reduce a production yield.
Some attempts have been made to develop automated wig manufacturing systems, but no success has been achieved.
According to the study by the present inventor, the greatest difficulty in automation of wig manufacturing exists in providing high-precision transplanting pitch. Human hairs are, in their natural condition, spaced from each other by less than 1 mm, or normally of the order of 0.5 mm, so that it will be desired to determine the transplanting pitch as such.
However, it is quite difficult, like a divine work, to operate an extremely thin needle at a pitch of lower than 1 mm along a predetermined line. When the needle should be wobbling even a little, the needle holes are connected with each other to form a continuous slit, thereby making it impossible to transplant hair segments onto a base.
More importantly, when the needle is to penetrate the base, it pushes the base, so that the needle would move and wobble.
If the needle should wobble, the hair segment cannot surely be hooked by the needle.
After repeated trial and error in development of automated wig manufacturing apparatus which is the first in the world, the present inventor has reached a conclusion that a keyword is an issue of the needle wobbling.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described background, with the object to surely hook the hair segment with the needle in automated wig manufacturing. Another object is to control the transplanting pitch of the hair segment with great accuracy. Still another object is to reduce a percentage of production of defective articles when automatically manufacturing wigs.