GB424492A - Improvements in or relating to the manufacture of cigarettes - Google Patents

Abstract

424,492. Cigarette-making machines. WIX, A., 338, Goswell Road, London, and MAY, R. F., 9, Manor Road, Potters Bar, Middlesex. July 14, 1933, No. 20021. [Class 130] Lengths of tobacco which are cut from a continuous rod are moved out of alignment therewith and associated with filter tips, the associated tobacco and filter tips being moved axially into engagement with means for applying a continuous paper strip to produce a continuous cigarette rod. In the construction shown in Figs. 4 and 5, a length of tobacco issuing from a collector tube 2 is severed by a cutter 3 and received in a bore 4<a> in an intermittently rotatable drum 4. Filter tips are fed by a plunger 19<a> into bores 7<a> in an intermittently rotatable disc 7, which is driven from the drum through pins 7c co-operating with slots 4<c>. When the bores 4<a>, 7<a> are in alignment, a plunger 5 pushes the filter tip into the bore 4<a>, and a picker 8 enters a slot in the plunger and passes through aligned slots 4b, 7b, in the drum and the disc to engage behind the tips and to eject the tobacco and the tip into the guide tube 9 of a rod-forming apparatus, which operates at a faster speed than the mechanism supplying the continuous rod of tobacco. To ensure that the bores 4<a>, 7<a> are accurately aligned, a pin 15 engages the lower pair of aligned bores before the plunger 5 enters the upper pair. The picker mechanism consists of two longitudinally reciprocating members 10 mounted on vertical slides 10<a> carrying the pickers 8 and having pins 10<b> engaging cam tracks 11<a> in a member 11 between plates 12, a spring-pressed pivoted member 10<c> ensuring the engagement of the pin with the upper part of the cam track on the return stroke. The pickers are bent outwardly at their upper parts to enable the lower part of one to pass freely over the lower part of the other on the return stroke. In modified constructions, (1) a double length of continuous tobacco rod is severed and a double-length filter tip is inserted from the disc, and the picker members 8 are mounted on the links of an endless chain ; and (2) the disc is dispensed with and the tips are inserted at the opposite end of the drum, either at a position in alignment with the tube 2 or at a previous stage, and the combined tip and tobacco portion is ejected either in the reverse direction to the travel of the tobacco rod by the picker mechanism described or in the same direction by utilizing picker devices having circular portions which abut against the tobacco charge.