Abstract: To minimize the misaligned, wrinkled and loose-end cigarettes and avoid waste cigarettes during the emptying associated with the clamping chain plate elevator in YF17 cigarette reservoir, a drum type cigarette elevator was designed. The elevator is mainly composed of a feeding drum, a transfer drum, a cigarette discharge mechanism including a stacking drum and other assemblies, a negative pressure system and a drive system. During the rotation of the drums, the functions of hold/release, transfer and elevation of cigarettes are realized by controlling the on/off state of the negative pressure in the drums' grooves. The drum parameters are determined for YF17A cigarette reservoir. The numbers of the grooves and the gear teeth of the feeding drum and transfer drum are 78 and 234 respectively, and those of the stacking drum are 48 and 144 respectively. The gear module and the groove pitch for all drums are 2 mm and 6π respectively. The designed elevator was tested on" Nanjing (Hong)" brand cigarettes in Huaiyin Cigarette Factory. The results showed that in the case of drum type elevator, the number of machine shutdown and the downtime caused by misaligned cigarettes reduced by 84.67% and 85.21% respectively, the number of waste cigarettes due to the emptying and the defective cigarettes in the packing line reduced by 95.68% and 3 percentage points respectively, and the operating efficiency of the cigarette maker and packer increased by 0.6 percentage points. This technology provides support for reducing cigarette loss, improving cigarette product quality, and increasing the operational efficiency of cigarette maker and packer.