The object of the invention is a method of filling containers with rod-like articles.

The process of filling the containers with finished rod-like articles constitutes one of the end stages of production in the tobacco industry. From the viewpoint of the final product quality, it is important that the rod like articles are arranged in the container in such a way that the shape of the rod-like articles is not deformed, the rod-like articles are not displaced in the container, and at the same time the most optimal use of space available in the container for the rod-like articles is ensured.

From the patent application US6142054A a method of filling cylindrical containers with rod-like articles is known wherein the rod-like articles, before inserting into the container, are placed in a hexagonal arrangement in which the adjacent sides of a hexagon composed of the rod-like articles form the angle of 120°. The connected centres of the rod-like articles arranged in this way form adjacent rows of triangles forming hexagons - such arrangement is consistent with the regular hexagonal tessellation. Flowever, such arrangement of the rod-like articles has the drawback that it does not allow a uniform arrangement of the articles on the curvatures of the cylindrical container, as a result of which empty spaces, not filled with the rod-like articles are formed. In consequence, after inserting the rod-like articles arranged in this way into the container, they are subject to displacement.

From the patent US7216755B2 a method of filling rectangular containers with rod-like articles is known wherein before inserting the articles into the container an arrangement of twenty rod-like articles, placed in eight columns containing respectively 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2 articles in individual columns is formed. The connected centres of the rod-like articles arranged in this way form an irregular tessellation composed, respectively, of two rows of squares and three rows of triangles. Such arrangement may be applied only when filling rectangular containers with the rod-like articles.

The purpose of this invention is to overcome the drawbacks of solutions known from the prior art by developing a method of filling containers with rod-like articles wherein the use of space available in the container for the rod-like articles was optimised, thus the displacement of the articles was limited.

The object of the invention is a method of filling containers with rod-like articles wherein the rod-like articles are fed by means of a feeder of rod-like articles and the rod-like articles are inserted into the container, characterised in that before inserting the rod-like articles into the container an arrangement of the rod-like articles whose centres are arranged according to a tessellation defined by the formula (3 ⁶ ; 3 ³ .4 ² ) v=2, t=3, e=4 is formed. Such tessellation is also referred to as extended semi-regular triangular tessellation.

Preferably, the method according to the invention is characterised in that the rod-like articles are inserted into a container with a cylindrical shape.

Preferably, the method according to the invention is characterised in that an arrangement of fifty rod-like articles comprising eight columns is formed.

Preferably, the method according to the invention is characterised in that an arrangement in which the columns successively contain 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 7, 6, 4 rod-like articles is formed.

Apart from the limitation of displacement of the rod-like articles in the container, with a simultaneous elimination of the risk of deformation of the articles, the solution according to the invention brings a number of other advantages. The application of an arrangement of rod-like articles whose centres are arranged according to the extended semi-regular triangular tessellation allows to additionally reduce the diameter of the cylindrical container compared to solutions known from the prior art, with the simultaneous feeding of the same number of articles inside the container. Moreover, the solution may be successfully used to fill both cylindrical and rectangular containers, in groups with smaller diameters without the need of an excessive compression of a group of rod-like articles - it is advantageous because the compression of tobacco industry articles usually causes the degradation of the rod-like articles.

The object of the invention was shown in detail in a preferred embodiment in a drawing in which:

Fig. 1 shows a side view of rod-like articles placed in an arrangement according to the invention;

Fig. 2 shows a side view of the rod-like articles placed in the arrangement according to the invention with the marked position of the centres and the formed polygons representing the arrangement of the rod-like articles;

Fig. 3 symbolically shows polygons representing the arrangement of the rod-like articles according to the invention;

Fig. 4 shows a side view of the rod-like articles placed in the arrangement according to the invention inscribed into the oval of a cylindrical container for rod-like articles;

Fig. 1 shows a side view of rod-like articles placed in an arrangement according to the invention, i.e. shows an arrangement of the rod-like articles whose centres are positioned according to the extended semi-regular triangular tessellation.

The rod-like articles in the tobacco industry are placed in a specific arrangement at different process points, when placing the articles into the trays or when converting a mass stream into single-layer flows. Flowever, the mutual arrangement of the rod-like articles is particularly important when packing the rod-like articles into a packet/container. The process of placing the rod-like articles is one of the last production stages when the rod-like articles are finished tobacco industry articles, particularly exposed to mechanical damage which occurs when trying to insert the rod-like articles into a container with dimensions not corresponding to the dimensions of the group of rod-like articles placed into the container. By changing the arrangement of the articles the shape of the group of articles is changed, which translates into the possibility of placing a respective group in a container with a specific shape.

For the description of arrangements of the rod-like articles, it is necessary to introduce a suitable language which would clearly and unambiguously describe the arrangement of articles in a group. For the purposes of this description, the language applied to describe the method of surface area division into polygons was used, whereas an arrangement of polygons dividing a surface area is referred to as tiling or tessellation. Fig. 2 shows how a polygon grid by connecting the rod-like articles with one another was created. Fig. 2 shows the rod-like articles arranged using the method according to the invention, with the marked position of centres of the rod-like articles and the polygons formed by connecting the centres of the rod-like articles. In adjacent columns, each containing 8 rod-like articles, the centres of the rod-like articles are placed at the same height and form a row of squares. According to this embodiment, successive columns, containing respectively 7 and 6 rod-like articles, are shifted relative to one another and relative to the middle columns containing 8 rod-like articles, so that the centres of the rod-like articles in these columns, connected with one another, form two rows of adjacent equilateral triangles. Outermost columns, containing 4 rod-like articles, have their centres placed at a height corresponding to the height of the centres of adjacent rod-like articles in adjacent columns and form a row of squares.

Due to the application of the connection of centres of the rod-like articles and the formation of polygons, a description consistent with the available mathematical language, reflecting the arrangement of objects in the space was obtained.

The arrangements of polygons may be divided into several categories e.g. regular tessellation, periodic tessellation. An excellent source putting in order and systematizing different kinds of tessellations is the publication Tilings by Regular Polygons II - A Catalog of Tilings, D. Chavey Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in Computers & Mathematics with Applications. Vol. 17, No. 103, pp. 147 - 165, 1989, publication No. 0097-4943/89 Pergamon Press pic, 1989. In that publication, the application of a description used in the crystallographic classification, describing the symmetries of spatial objects in views, was proposed.

In the literature, the tessellation is described with reference to the vertices and the number and kind of polygons being in contact with a respective vertex counted in the clockwise direction, for example if a triangle, a square, a hexagon and a square meet in a respective vertex, such vertex may be described by the sequence of numbers 3.4.6.4. If in a respective vertex six triangles meet, such vertex may be described by the sequence of numbers 3.3.3.3.3.3, in the shortened form 3 ⁶ . If in a respective vertex different polygons meet, the description takes such form as e.g. 3 ³ .4 ² for three triangles and two squares. Furthermore, if a respective tessellation is described by two vertices, it may be described by a pair e.g. (3 ⁶ ;3 ³ .4 ² ), where in the first vertex meet six triangles, while in the second vertex meet three triangles and two squares. Such description may still remain unambiguous, which is why additionally an orbital notation referring, respectively, to the orbits of vertices, orbits of polygons and orbits of edges was introduced, where v denotes the number of orbits of vertices relative to one another, t the number of polygons relative to vertices, e the number of orbits of edges relative to vertices. Besides, an orbit is to be understood as a rotation with a unique radius which allows vertices, polygons and edges, respectively, to overlap.

In the description used in the publication„A Catalog of Tilings”, the tessellation formed by connecting the centres of the rod-like articles and isolated in Fig. 3 is described as one of 2-isogonal tessellations, in particular it is the 2-isogonal, 3-isohedral, 4-isotoxal tessellation with the formula (3 ⁶ ; 3 ³ .4 ² ) v=2, t=3, e=4, (where v is the number of orbits of vertices describing the tessellation, t is the number of orbits of polygons used in the tessellation, and e is the number of edge orbits). Such formula was presented in the publication „A Catalog of Tilings” in figure 5, first row, first figure on the right. The same tessellation may be also described as the extended semi-regular triangular tessellation. The second description refers to the systematics used in a more colloquial language where the use of triangles and squares results in assigning the tessellation to the group of triangular tessellations, the extension refers to the introduction of squares between the rows of triangles, while semi-regular means having two rows of triangles between the square layers (such description can be found for example on Wikipedia pages referring to extended triangular tessellations).

It was noticed that extended triangular tessellations are particularly well suitable for solving problems related to placing rod-like articles in packaging both rectangular, such as cardboard boxes, and oval, such as cans. For the authors of the inventions searched for an arrangement of rod-like articles with a column structure (easy for automation) which would be simultaneously characterised by a great group compactness, and simultaneously suitable for filling various kinds of packaging.

It was noticed that the extended semi-regular triangular tessellation described by the formula (3 ⁶ ; 3 ³ .4 ² ) v=2, t=3, e=4, met these requirements. In the case of rectangular packaging, it gave results comparable to applied hexagonal arrangements. On the other hand, in the case of round packaging the tessellation according to the invention gave a considerably smaller radius of a circle circumscribed about a group arranged according to such tessellation than the arrangements applied previously, e.g. full extended triangular tessellation, when arranging the same number of rod-like articles with an identical diameter.

Particularly preferable is the application of the arrangement according to the invention to pack a considerable number of rod-like articles into cylindrical containers, e.g. fifty articles into a single can. The conducted research work revealed that the arrangement behaved very well for rod-like articles with different diameters.

As shown in Fig. 4, a group of fifty rod-like articles, before being put into a box, is placed in eight columns, whereas according to this embodiment each of the columns of the arrangement contains successively 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 7, 6, 4 rod-like articles arranged according to the extended semi-regular triangular tessellation described by the formula (3 ⁶ ; 3 ³ .4 ² ) v=2, t=3, e=4. It is a particularly advantageous arrangement applied to pack tobacco industry articles, such as cigarettes, into cylindrical cans of 50 pieces in one can.

In the preferred embodiment, there was introduced a method of filling containers with rod-like articles wherein the rod-like articles are fed by means of a feeder of rod-like articles and the rod-like articles are inserted into the container, characterised in that before inserting the rod-like articles into the container there is formed an arrangement of rod-like articles whose centres are arranged according to a tessellation described by the formula (3 ⁶ ; 3 ³ .4 ² ) v=2, t=3, e=4. This arrangement is formed in a forming pocket or in a forming mouthpiece, depending on the applied container filling technology.

The method according to the invention is characterised in that the rod-like articles are inserted into a container with a cylindrical shape. In particular by means of a single-stage push which minimises the damage to the rod-like articles. It is possible precisely due obtaining a smaller diameter of a group of rod like articles which as a result do not require an additional compression when packing into the containers with a standard diameter, packed conventionally using the press-fit technique.

Particularly preferably, the arrangement according to the invention is applied to groups of 50 pieces of rod like articles where the advantages in the form of a reduced diameter of the arrangement are clearly visible. The diameter of the arrangement of rod-like articles according to the invention is over 2 mm smaller in comparison to arrangements applied in the prior art.

The arrangement of 50 pieces of rod-like articles according to the invention takes a minimum diameter 01 when there is formed an arrangement in which the columns successively contain 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 7, 6, 4 rod like articles.