Cigarette machine
A cigarette machine , also known as a (cigarette) rod machine , is a machine for producing cigarettes .
history
The American inventor James Albert Bonsack invented the first cigarette rod machine in 1880, which could produce 120,000 cigarettes a day. Together with James "Buck" Duke he founded the first cigarette factory, the American Tobacco Company .
In 1900, the German engineer Otto Bergsträßer had an invention patented years earlier, which also represented a cigarette rod machine. Together with the businessman Max Klinge, Bergsträßer founded a company for the manufacture of cigarette and packaging machines called Compagnie Universelle in Dresden before the turn of the century . The company grew so that the plant was relocated to Zwickauer Straße in 1898. From 1915 the company operated as the Universelle-Zigarettenmaschinenfabrik JC Müller & Co. In 1935 Kurt Adolf Körber became an employee of Universelle. As the inventor, Körber applied for his first patent in 1924. He was appointed technical director in 1940.
After the war, Körber fled to Hamburg with documents from the Universelle (including technical drawings). In July 1946 he started repairing cigarette machines and manufacturing hand tobacco cutters in Hamburg. He then moved to Hamburg-Bergedorf and founded the company Hauni ( Ha nseatische Uni verselle) Maschinenfabrik Körber & Co KG . On June 1, 1956, Körber opened the Tabak Technikum Hamburg in Hamburg-Bergedorf on the Hauni premises . One of the most important inventions for the company was the MAX filter attachment machine developed in 1956 . With this, Hauni achieved its breakthrough on the international market. An anecdote says that Körber concluded from a newspaper report about increasing milk consumption that Germans were more health-conscious, which is why he reduced the health risks of cigarettes by using a filter.
functionality
The cigarette machine forms a tobacco rod from the prepared loose tobacco supplied by compressed air and wraps it with the cigarette paper . The continuous, now wrapped tobacco rod is then divided with a rotating, inclined knife block. The ring-shaped counterholder, which is supposed to guarantee a clean cut, works like a "flying saw". The strand is thus cut correctly and not just cut off with a knife edge. When producing a filter cigarette, cigarettes that are twice as long are first cut, which are then divided in the middle in the subsequent filter attachment machine and pulled apart a little. The filter piece that is twice as long is then inserted between these two cigarette halves (each with a single cigarette length), wrapped in filter paper together with the two cigarettes, and the twice as long filter piece is then separated in the middle. Then every second filter cigarette is turned over and then the finished cigarettes are transported to the packaging machine .
Procedural details
The cigarette machine consists of a distribution unit (shown in the sketch on the right), in which vibrating shaft walls and spiked rollers ensure that the tobacco arriving by pneumatic conveyance is evenly distributed within the distribution box (see tobacco sifter). At the bottom of the box, the mixed tobacco is pulled apart finely and evenly. This is done by means of an air-permeable, textile conveyor belt (the so-called suction line conveyor), which pulls the tobacco evenly from the distribution box. So that the tobacco stays on the belt, a vacuum acts underneath the air-permeable conveyor belt, so that the tobacco is sucked onto the belt and thus virtually fixed. At the end of the suction rod conveyor there is an excess removal device, consisting of two rotating trimmer disks, which remove excess tobacco fibers from the tobacco rod. Depending on the position of the trimmer discs in relation to the conveyor belt, a more or less large amount of tobacco is removed. The excess tobacco falls into a duct and is fed back to the distribution unit.
The tobacco rod is then deposited by the suction rod conveyor onto a continuously running format belt, which forms the tobacco rod round. The tobacco rod then runs through a narrowed mouthpiece, where the cigarette paper wraps around the mouthpiece from the outside and envelops the tobacco after the mouthpiece. This station is also called the format chamber. At this point there is also a glue nozzle which continuously glues the cigarette paper to one edge. A short heating section then ensures that the glue can set. In addition, the glue seam is smoothed. This creates an endless, wrapped and taped tobacco rod. After the cigarette paper is unrolled from the large bobbin, it passes through a printing unit shortly before the format chamber, in which the name of the cigarette brand is printed.
Before the tobacco rod is cut into cigarette lengths twice as long, it is x-rayed, as it were. After the printing unit there is a "fluoroscopy unit" (the cord control and measuring device, quasi an X-ray device), which measures the density of the tobacco flow. Radioactive isotopes , i.e. radionuclides, are often used here as a radiation source. However, there are also fluoroscopic units that work with a combination of capacitive , optical or infrared sensors . Depending on the measured density ratio, the trimmer discs are then regulated in such a way that the tobacco density required by the customer is precisely maintained. This represents a closed control loop.
After cutting the twice as long cigarettes, a so-called spider picks them up and transfers them to the filter attachment machine. The spider consists of several (mostly eight) metal arms that suck in the cut, twice as long cigarettes by vacuum and rotate constantly in a kind of oval.
One or two rods of tobacco
The cigarette machines are continuously running machines, while the packaging machine is often clocked, i.e. run intermittently.
The performance of a modern cigarette machine depends on whether it has one or two strands of tobacco. Until the 1980s, cigarette machines with a tobacco rod predominated. The simpler mechanical structure as well as the easier handling spoke in favor of this design. While the performance of a cigarette machine with one rod was around 6,000 cigarettes per minute (i.e. around 100 cigarettes per second) in the early 1980s, the production of 10,000 cigarettes per minute (= 167 cigarettes per second) was possible in the 1990s. For single-lane cigarette machines the reasonable limit was reached. In order to be able to achieve even higher outputs, two-line machines were developed by an Italian cigarette machine manufacturer back in the 1980s. These meanwhile achieve a maximum output of 20,000 cigarettes per minute (= 333 cigarettes per second).
As a rule, the filter attachment machine runs with the same output as the cigarette rod machine. But there are also production concepts in which the two machines are separated from one another by means of a buffer store. The same is possible between filter attaching machines and packaging machines . Here the manufacturing concepts predominate, where there is a more or less large buffer storage between the filter attachment machine (s) and the packaging machine (s). In the event of a material change (wrapping paper, tax stamp, etc.) or a defect in the packaging machine, the cigarette rod machine and the filter attachment machine do not have to be stopped immediately. Each cigarette is also checked for leaks in the filter attachment machine. Depending on the given production output, this takes place in the millisecond range.
literature
- “Our portrait” - Hauni-Werke, a company of the Körber Group. Brochure from the 1980s.
- This is how a cigarette is made - billions of times precision. Brochure from BAT Cigaretten-Fabriken GmbH, Hamburg
Web links
- Hauni-Werke website
- Production of filter cigarettes on YouTube
- Production of filter cigarettes on YouTube
- Gender, Cigar and Cigarettes. Technological Change and National Patterns - PDF file