In tobacco feeding apparatus in a cigarette making machine, "shorts" are collected from the tobacco supply and are mixed by tumbling in a hollow rotating member such as a drum forming part of a cigarette-making machine, e.g. a main feed drum, a refuser drum, or a shorts return drum. In one embodiment shorts are fed into rotating annular sieves one within the other and mounted in a rotating drum, so that the shorts are graded as well as mixed. The mixed shorts are later incorporated in the tobacco filler.
A continuous-rod cigarette-making machine of the type in which tobacco is conveyed from a hopper to a winnowing zone and there thrown across a rising airstream which entrains the tobacco and carries it up to the lower face of a suction conveyor on which a tobacco filler is formed has sealing means associated with conveying means for transporting the tobacco from the hopper to the winnowing zone, said sealing means opposing air flow between the hopper and the winnowing zone to reduce disturbance of the tobacco during its transport by the conveying means.
Relatively small tobacco particles (including short tobacco and larger particles of tobacco dust) are extracted by suction from the tobacco filler stream in a cigarette making machine and are separated from the suction air stream or streams for immediate introduction into the magazine of the distributor or into the tobacco stream building zone of the machine. The separated particles are sprinkled by gravity onto the supply of tobacco in the magazine or are conveyed in a stream of compressed air which is admitted into the lower portion of the magazine or discharges the particles into the stream building zone so that the thus admitted particles form an intermediate layer of the filler stream.
A cigarette rod making machine wherein the surplus of smokable material which is removed by the trimming device is returned into the magazine of the distributor next to the supply of fresh tobacco. Fresh tobacco is withdrawn from the supply in the form of a relatively wide first layer, and the returned surplus is removed in the form of a narrower second layer adjacent one marginal portion of the first layer. The two layers are converted into a stream which advanced toward and past the trimming device in such a way that the latter removes mainly recirculated surplus tobacco which is again admitted into the magazine for conversion into the second layer.
A method for the sorting of bulk material comprises the feeding of the bulk material into a frusto-conical sorting means. The rotational speed of the sorting means is varied to permit the passage of the bulk material therethrough at the higher speed and the migration of tramp material along the sorting means at the lower speed. Continuously alternating the speeds allows sorting to be done on a continuous basis.
