Method of and apparatus for making filter cigarettes

US5135008A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Korber AG · DE

Inventors

• Erwin Oesterling · Hamburg, DE
• Werner Hinz · Bischofswerda, DE
• Siegfried Schlisio · Geesthacht, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Mar 18, 1991
• Grant date: Aug 4, 1992
• Expiry date: Mar 18, 2011

Classification

• Technology area (CPC A): Human Necessities
• CPC primary: A24C5/471
• WIPO field: Other consumer goods
• WIPO sector: Other fields

Abstract

Filter cigarettes are mass-produced in a machine wherein parallel groups of coaxial plain cigarettes and filter plugs are moved at right angles to their axes through a first station wherein their components are connected to each other by uniting bands, thereupon through a second station wherein the resulting filter cigarettes of double unit length are severed midway across their filter plugs to yield pairs of filter cigarettes of unit length which advance in two rows and are mirror images of each other, and through a third station wherein the filter cigarettes of one row are turned end-for-end and placed between successive non-inverted filter cigarettes. The mutual spacing of groups, filter cigarettes of double unit length and/or of filter cigarettes of unit length is reduced at least once, preferably twice, namely the first time between the first and second stations and the second time at the third station. This results in the formation of a single row of filter cigarettes wherein the spacing between neighboring cigarettes is zero or close to zero. The mutual spacing of groups is not increased between the first and second spacing-reducing stations and/or downstream of the second s…