Rod Making & Combining

Rod making

High-speed tobacco rod making is a core aspect of many of our Nicotine related projects. We can rebuild, refurbish and upgrade a multitude of OEM branded equipment including, but not limited to, Körber, G.D and Molins.

Format conversion kits, spare parts and retrofittable inspection and laser perforation systems are available for existing machinery.

Combining

Combining brings cylindrical components together and applies a tipping or overwrap to specification, across a wide range of product formats.

As opposed to the traditional inline “rod making” style combining, we offer a rolling style combining. At pilot scale the specification is usually defined by how often formats change rather than by peak speed. Machines are built to be reconfigured rather than replaced, so modular construction makes a format change a tooling operation rather than a rebuild.

Format Flexibility

The demand placed on this type of machinery is format flexibility. The equipment has to accept a range of rod diameters, lengths and wrap widths and be able to switch between them quickly. Drums are machined to accept more than one diameter, quick-release tooling and simple timing mechanisms allow for rapid format changes.

Our Flexible Tipping and Combining Machine (FTCM) can accept and process a wide array of different formats.

• Large base rod length range
• Large component diameter range
• Large tipping width range
• 2-up, 4-up, 6-up, 8-up cutting options
• Servo driven knife, glue application and tipping patch delivery axis
• Adjustable gap separation
• Symmetrical tip turning
• High speed vision inspection and ejection of non-conforming product

Materials handled

Tobacco: cut rag/leaf, strip cut, extruded rod

Filter: mono-acetate, hollow acetate, non-wrapped acetate, paper, PLA

Miscellaneous: paper tube, ceramics, plastics