Design of a packaging machine for paperboard cigar packets

To reduce the production cost of paperboard-packed cigars and machanize packet packaging, a paperboard cigar packet packaging machine was designed based on the packaging process for “Huanghelou 1916 (Xuezhimeng No. 9)” cigars. The machine is mainly composed of a cigar feeding system, an inner packet forming system, and an outer packet forming system. The cigar feeding system consists of a cigar conveying mechanism, an orientation adjustment mechanism and a cellophane sleeve folding mechanism. It automatically feeds loose cigars fitted with cigar bands and cellophane sleeves, adjusts their orientation to ensure that all cigar bands face upward, and folds the open ends of the cellophane sleeves. The inner and outer packet forming systems perform pickup, conveying, positioning, folding and drying of the inner and outer packet blanks, respectively. The application results showed that the machine operated stably and reliably, with an operating efficiency of 91% and an actual packaging speed of 652 packets per hour,, equivalent to the manual packaging speed of 7.2 skilled workers. The paperboard cigar packets produced by machine had an average damage ratio of 0.28% and the rejection ratio was 1.93%, which were 0.4 and 2.5 percentage points lower than those of manual packaging method, respectively. This machine provides technical support for improving the automation level of cigar production and the quality of cigar packaging.