Abstract: Tobacco dust building up in the knife slot of tobacco rod cutting drum might affect the appearance of the cut edge of tobacco rod, therefore the cutting drum in YJ219 filter assembler was modified. An inner spacing ring and an outer spacing ring are added in the knife slot and an oval groove is cut at the center position of tobacco rod in the air distribution block to form an internal chamber and a passage inside the cutting drum. The negative pressure formed by the drum rotation is used to expel the tobacco dust produced during tobacco rod cutting timely. The modified cutting drum was tested on a ZJ119 filter cigarette maker in Shijiazhuang Cigarette Factory, the results showed that: 1) Tobacco rod transfer was smooth and reliable, the cut edge of tobacco rod was clean and neat, and the tobacco dust remaining in the knife slot decreased by 88.37%. 2) The rejection rate of cigarettes with appearance defectives reduced by 1.04 percentage points, the percentage of dust-sandwiched cigarettes in the rejected cigarettes decreased by 50.28 percentage points. This method provides a support for promoting the production efficiency of filter cigarette maker.