GB745320A - Improvements in or relating to the manufacture of mouthpiece cigarettes - Google Patents

Abstract

745,320. Cigarette-making machines. MOLINS, D. W., and MOLINS MACHINE CO., Ltd. Nov. 17, 1954 [Nov. 19, 1953], No. 32164/53. Class 130. Mouthpiece cigarettes are made by forming a continuous cigarette rod having hollow portions at spaced intervals, cutting the rod through the hollow portions to form doublelength cigarette lengths with hollow ends, inserting stubs in the hollow ends and bisecting the lengths. The stubs may comprise filtering material, a hollow tube,and/or tobacco other material differing from the cigarette tobacco. A make-up conveyer 1, Fig. 1, is variably driven, so as to reduce speed whilst a knife 7 severs lengths from the tobacco stream thereon, by a cam 27, Fig. 2, oscillating rollers 22, 23 adjacent the main driving roller 21, the reduced speed being operative for one quarter of each cycle of speed variation. At other times, the conveyer 1 runs at substantially the speed of a travelling paper web 5 backed by a tape 6 and to which successive cut-off lengths are gripped by a roller 9 so as to cause them to move at web speed and so form spaces between them. The web 5 is then folded about the lengths, pasted and sealed, and the resulting rod cut into double-length portions with hollow ends which are forwarded by conveyers 30, 32, Fig. 4, moving at more than web speed and consisting of spaced parallel wires, to a sponge rubber deflector roller 37 which, when the portions are pressed against it by a member 38 operated by parallel cranks, delivers them laterally to a band 41, Fig. 5. One roller 34 of the conveyer 32 has a sponge rubber strip 36 to space the portions by accelerating them to the speed of the conveyers 30, 32. From the band 41 the portions are delivered to the flutes of a stepwise rotating drum 44, Fig. 5 and 6, at one position of which each portion receives stubs from aligned flutes of drums 45 under the action of a cam-actuated plunger 51 and spoon 47 at each end, the portion being temporarily held in its flute by a cam-actuated presser 64. A knife 70 bisects the portions into mouthpiece cigarettes which are delivered side-by-side to a conveyer 73. The drums 45 may be fed with stubs by apparatus like that of Specification 664,690.