TOBACCO ARTICLE MANUFACTURE METHOD AND APPARATUS Russian patent published in 1998 - IPC

FIELD: tobacco industry, in particular, production of nonfilter cigarettes. SUBSTANCE: method involves generating pulsed laser radiation; dividing it into n-secondary laser beams; focusing them to provide burning and formation of vent openings in cigarette paper in direction perpendicular to cigarette longitudinal axis for time interval equal to one laser pulse; wrapping tobacco filler with this paper; rolling it to produce tobacco strand; glueing and cutting to obtain tobacco products of predetermined length. Apparatus has laser, rotary mirrors, raster diffraction grating, objective and drum with cigarette paper tape, unit for filling cigarette paper with tobacco, rolling it to produce strand and glueing, optoelectronic pair having light source and photodetector. EFFECT: improved quality of nonfilter tobacco articles by reduced toxicity due to vent openings in cigarette paper adapted to maintain optimum ratio of air and smoke drawn by smoker during smoking of cigarette. 3 cl, 1 dwg