Abstract: To facilitate the maintenance of compression band unit in tobacco cutter, a device for removing and installing the whole compression band unit was designed. The device is composed of a support guide mechanism, a rotatable traction mechanism and a bracket. The support guide mechanism is used to turn the compression band unit for reducing the footprint of the device. The rotational traction mechanism is used to tension a flat belt and pull the compression band unit via rotating a handle manually, where a gearbox is used to reduce the traction force from 1 000 N to 40 N. The bracket is configured to hold the device in position and transfer the compression band unit; the deformation of the bracket in the horizontal direction is verified with the finite element simulation. The designed device was tested on SQ34 tobacco cutter, SQ35 tobacco stem cutter and EVO tobacco cutter. The results showed that the average time for compression band unit disassembling reduced by 9.1 min, that for assembling time reduced by 11.3 min, and the total disassembling and assembling time decreased by 25.5%. This technology provides a support for promoting the maintenance efficiency of tobacco cutter.