Apparatus and method for forming of collations of rod shaped articles

Abstract

The present invention relates to an apparatus for forming a predetermined collation of rod shaped articles, in particular smoking articles, comprising a feeder arrangement (1), and a pocket (3,4,5). The pocket is adapted to house a predetermined number of rod shaped articles (13,14,15) in the predetermined collation, wherein in the predetermined collation each rod shaped article has a predetermined position within the pocket. The apparatus further comprises a hopper (2) with a plurality of hopper vanes (9), wherein each hopper vane is at least associated to one predetermined position in the pocket. The feeder arrangement comprises a first feeder (6) being adapted to provide a first subgroup of rod shaped articles (13) of a first type to a first subset of hopper vanes, a second feeder (7) being adapted to provide a second subgroup of rod shaped articles (14) of a second type to a second subset of hopper vanes, and a third feeder (8) being adapted to provide a third subgroup of rod shaped articles (15) of a third type to a third subset of hopper vanes. The first, second and third subgroups of the rod shaped articles are a first, second and third part of the predetermined collation, respectively. The second feeder is arranged in between the first feeder and the third feeder. At least the first type of rod shaped articles is different from the second type of rod shaped articles and at least the second type of rod shaped articles is different from the third type of rod shaped articles. The invention further relates to a method for forming a collation of rod shaped articles and to a use of a feeding apparatus with three hoppers.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.