Manufacture of cigarettes
AssigneeMolins Limited
InventorsDesmond Walter Molins, John Alfred Mills, Eryk Stefan Doerman
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
This invention is concerned with cigarette making systems including a testing device for detecting bad quality cigarettes. Basically, the cigarette testing device is itself tested by deliberately making test cigarettes containing predetermined faults and checking whether the test cigarettes are detected by the testing device. The deliberate faults may be holes deliberately made in the cigarette wrappers. The holes may be made either on the cigarette paper web before it is wrapped around the filler in a continuous rod cigarette making machine, or the holes may be made in the wrappers of finished cigarettes.
Claims13
A cigarette making system comprising a continuous rod cigarette making machine for producing cigarette portions, means for combining the cigarette portions with lengths of filter material to form filter tipped cigarettes, a first testing device for detecting leaks in the wrapper of the filter tipped cigarettes, means for feeding the cigarettes to the testing device, and first means associated with the testing device for ejecting faulty cigarettes, in which the cigarette making system includes, upstream of the position at which the cigarettes are tested, means for deliberately producing leaks of predetermined size in the wrapper of selected cigarettes, and monitoring means for detecting whether the cigarettes containing the deliberate leaks are ejected by the first ejection means comprising a second testing device having second ejection means positioned downstream of the first ejection means associated with the first cigarette testing device and arranged automatically to test and eject any of the cigarettes containing the deliberately make leaks which were not ejected by the first ejection means.
In a method of making cigarettes including the steps of forming a filler, enclosing the filler in a wrapper to form a continuous rod, severing the rod to form cigarette portions, testing the cigarette portions to detect leaks in the wrappers thereof, segregating those cigarette portions which are found to have leaks, the improvement comprising the further step of deliberately providing the wrapper of selected cigarette portions with leaks capable of being detected during testing of the cigarette portions so that these selected cigarette portions will be segregated and again testing those cigarette portions not segregated as a result of said first testing thereof to detect leaks in the wrappers and thereby determine the effectiveness of said first testing step.
A cigarette making system comprising a continuous rod cigarette making machine, a first testing device for detecting leaks in the paper wrapper of cigarettes produced by said cigarette making machine, a first ejecting mechanism responsive to said first testing device for ejecting cigarettes having leaks, leak producing means for deliberately providing leaks in the paper wrapper associated with certain cigarettes so as to cause the certain cigarettes to be ejected, a second testing device downstream of said first testing device for detecting leaks in the paper wrapper of cigarettes, and a second ejecting mechanism responsive to said second testing device for ejecting any deliberately leaky cigarettes not ejected by said first ejecting mechanism.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.