Cigarette Hopper With Defective Cigarette Reject Means

What is this patent about?

'810 is related to the field of cigarette packing machinery, specifically hoppers used to feed aligned cigarettes into a block-forming chamber. These hoppers receive cigarettes from trays and must ensure that only complete, acceptable cigarettes are delivered for packaging, avoiding jams and ensuring product quality.

The underlying idea behind '810 is to mechanically filter out defective cigarettes and debris before they reach the block-forming chamber. This is achieved by using a combination of sliding channels and spaced guides that only support cigarettes of a certain minimum length, allowing shorter, broken cigarettes and loose parts to fall out.

The claims of '810 focus on a hopper with a filling area and a supply area, featuring sliding channels that support acceptable cigarettes moving into the supply area while allowing reject cigarettes and parts to drop out. The key is the physical arrangement that differentiates between acceptable and unacceptable items based on length.

In practice, cigarettes are fed into the hopper and guided towards delivery pockets via conveyor belts. As the cigarettes move along the sliding channels, they encounter spaced parallel guides. If a cigarette is of sufficient length, both ends are supported, and it continues into the delivery pocket. However, if a cigarette is broken or a piece of filter is detached, it will be too short to be supported by the guides and will fall through the opening.

This design differs from prior approaches by incorporating a passive mechanical sorting mechanism directly into the hopper. Instead of relying solely on upstream inspection and rejection devices, the hopper itself acts as a final filter, ensuring that only cigarettes meeting the length criteria are passed on for packaging. The use of spaced guides in the sliding channels provides a simple and effective way to separate acceptable and unacceptable cigarettes based on their physical dimensions.