GB1231384A - - Google Patents

Abstract

1,231,384. Cigar-making machines. MOLINS MACHINE CO. Ltd. and D. W. MOLINS. 31 July, 1968 [3 Aug., 1967], No. 35794/67. Heading A2C. In a process of forming a continuous stream of tobacco leaf portions for the manufacture of cigars, in which the leaf portions are deposited on a travelling conveyer and thus tend to lie substantially parallel thereto so that after compressing to a circular cross-section and wrapping the pieces of leaf tend to revert to their original flat condition causing the rod produced to assume an oval cross-section, the distortion of the rod after wrapping is reduced by segregating smaller leaf portions from larger leaf portions and so supplying the smaller leaf portions that they lie at the upper part of the stream and constitute a zone of relatively fluid and easily deformable leaf portions. Smaller and larger leaf portions are pneumatically fed through a passage 6 to sections 1A and 1B respectively of a suction conveyer 1, and the tobacco stream so formed is trimmed on its underside at 7. Preferably rods 10 project a short distance into-the passage.6 from the right as viewed in Fig. 3. This causes the smaller leaf portions to build up on the conveyer 1 in longitudinal ridges between which the later supplied larger leaf: portions arrange themselves in random fashion. In another embodiment, tobacco is showered downwardly to form a stream on a further conveyer, the smaller leaf portions being fed last at the downstream end thereof and the stream then transferred to the underside of a suction conveyer.