Abstract: To address the problems of printed steel seal offset (especially under variable-speed operating conditions) and heavy maintenance workload existing in the on-line steel seal printing system of the ZJ119 filter cigarette maker, an on-line positioning and slitting system is developed, and the original on-line steel seal printing device is dismantled. Matched pre-printed cigarette paper (special cigarette paper preprinted with steel seal patterns and equipped with equidistantly distributed recognizable markers) is required for the operation of this system. A color mark sensor is adopted to detect the spacing of markers in real time. Meanwhile, a paper feed virtual axis phase compensation mechanism and a position-type PID control algorithm with self-tuning based on speed intervals are introduced to dynamically correct the slitting position of the cutter disc on line. A certain cigarette brand produced at Hangzhou Cigarette Factory is taken as the research object to verify the application effect of the system. The test results show that after adopting the pre-printed cigarette paper and its supporting on-line positioning and slitting system, the reject rate of cigarette rods under variable-speed conditions decreases from 9.0%-10.0% to 1.5%-2.0%, and the average maintenance time of the paper feeding system reduces from 31.0 min per shift to 1.3 min per shift. This system helps improve the appearance quality of cigarette rods and the effective operation rate of equipment, and also provides equipment guarantee for cigarette rod forming during the subsequent development and promotion of pre-printed cigarette paper.