B.a.t. Cigarettenfabriken Gmbh

Manfred Kuhne

Reinhard Ulrich

Meinhard Meyer

Hartmut Federle

Friedrich Walther

Paul-Georg Henning

Horst Gaisser

Heinz-Werner Masurat

Hayo Giebel

Viktor Baumgartner

Werner Rech

Rudiger Arnold

Hans Heinold

Ralf-Dietrich Tilgner

In a method and an apparatus for controlling the physical properties of a rod of smokable material the actual values of at least two physical properties, in particular resistance to draw and hardness or deformation of the tobacco rod or of the smokable article, are detected; the differences between said actual values and predetermined desired values are determined and control signals derived therefrom; said control signals are compared with each other and the particular instantaneously largest control signal is supplied to a single actuator, that is an ecreteur or a hopper. An auto-selector circuit with maximum selection is used to compare the control signals.

Method and apparatus for controlling at least two physical properties,

An apparatus for optical monitoring of the surface of rod-shaped smoking articles and/or filter rods for the tobacco industry comprises a conveying means transporting the rods perpendicularly to their longitudinal direction and a high-pressure lamp which serves as light source and which is connected via an optical fibre cable to a sensor block; the optical fibre cable is divided amongst at least two cross-section transformers with strip-shaped light exit regions whose light rays are directed via a further optical system from above and below respectively onto the line-shaped region of the surface of the rod. In addition the sensor block contains a row of photoelectric transducers which simultaneously the line-shaped surface region in the longitudinal direction of the rod and thereby pick up the light reflected at the surface of the rod. An arrangement controlled by the production cycle clock pulse determines by comparison surface faults from the output signals of the photoelectric transducers dependent on the reflectivity of the line-shaped region of the surface.

Apparatus for optical monitoring with a high pressure lamp connected to

An apparatus for detecting the longitudinal edges of a rod-shaped object moving in its longitudinal direction, in particular a tobacco or filter rod, comprises a light source, at least one beam divider for dividing the light beam coming from the light source into at least two light beams sweeping over the edge regions of the object, an optical deflection system for sweeping the two light beams over the object, two photodetectors for the light beams and an evaluating means for determining the position of the longitudinal edges from the instants of the bright/dark transitions at the two photodetectors on the one hand and the instantaneous positions of the light beams on the other hand. The or each beam divider generates two light beams which are parallel to each other and move in opposite directions over the object.

Apparatus for detecting the longitudinal edges of a rod-shaped object

Growing community of inventors

Furtwangen, Germany

Manfred Kuhne