Patent Application
20250017259
Presently, pre-rolled cigarettes are offered in cartons wherein each cigarette has a supporting tip at a proximal while the distal end remains open. Usually tightly packed industrially produced cigarettes hardly experience any spillage. The cigarette body is usually of a rolling paper with an area density between about 15-20 g/m2. Paper of this thickness is ill suited for use in combination with medicinal herbs, such as cannabis or marijuana. A part of the stability of the shape of the cigarette is derived from the smokeable that is packed therein.
In order to prevent the cigarettes from collapsing a thicker rolling paper with an area density that is about 50-100 g/m2 is usually chosen. This is particularly density is exceedingly useful for medicinal cigarettes wherein the smokeable is free of tobacco. The presence of the latter components adds to the sturdiness of the overall cigarette.
While lower paper densities are still used in practice, these papers usually rip or bend near the supporting tip under the weight of the smokeable that is contained therein. Usually, such cigarettes are encased in a full plastic storage cone to prevent this, but the simple fact remains that the cigarette will still damage or deform once taken out of the plastic storage cone for use, or may be damaged in the process of placing it into the container. That is to say, the cigarette is highly vulnerable when being handled, and gravity is its omnipresent enemy. Even in the plastic container spillage can happen. Accordingly, the cigarette is usually closed by deforming the paper at a distal end thereof. Structural failure of the cigarette by the application of torsion is common, especially when inexperienced laborers are employed in the production process.
While the plastic cone prevents damage during transport it should be obvious that its use places a very heavy environmental burden on an otherwise fully natural and compostable product. Accordingly, these lower paper weights are highly undesirable and preferably avoided altogether.
To prevent spillage in cigarettes with higher paper density it is common practice to use a silicone or plastic end cap. To insert such a cap the body is usually only partially filled, which is arguably a waste of paper. Alternatively, the denser paper can be deformed for closing the cigarette.
However, arid storage conditions easily affect the brittleness of such denser papers, which means that deformation closing is highly unreliable, often leading to immediate structural failures in the closing of the cigarette. In yet another example the denser paper is far more prone to reassume its form over time, thus leading to an unfurling of the paper while in storage. This means that spillage is not always prevented.
These silicone and plastic end-caps are therefore more reliable and preferentially used in industry. Yet, this solution is exceedingly environmentally costly, because these caps make their way into nature.
Accordingly, the present invention aims to reduce this environmental impact, and provide a reliable alternative for these end-caps.
According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a cigarette comprising a first rolling material of a first area density that is between about 50 and about 100 g/m2, preferably between about 55 and about 65 g/m2, a hollow body, wherein the hollow body comprises a supporting tip, such as a filter tip, arranged inside of a proximal end of the hollow body, and wherein the body is loaded with a smokeable material. The invention is characterized in that the cigarette is plugged at a distal end of the body, using a second rolling paper with a lower area density compared to the first rolling material.
The first rolling material is preferably a rolling paper, but may alternatively also be made of dried leaves or flower petals. It should be understood that the term cigarette is intended to be understood as also comprising cigars.
While plugging the distal end can take several forms, a superior form involves forming a sleeve with the second rolling paper. A first portion of this sleeves extends within the body and a second portion projects from the body out from the distal end in a longitudinal direction of the body, which is the same longitudinal direction as that of the cigarette itself. The second portion is then deformed so as to close the sleeve. The sleeve thus forms a plug. To prevent that the sleeve slides out, the second rolling paper can be glued, prior to rolling, to the first material. The glue can be a food grade glue such as Arabic gum, also called sugar gum. The person skilled in the art will know that there are far more glues possible, and in some cases the second paper can be heat pressed to the first material.
Beneficially the cigarette can be filled without loss of structural integrity such that the smokeable material extends from the tip to the physical deformation, which is beyond the distal end of the hollow body formed by the first rolling material. This is quite unique! As this prevents material excess of the usually more costly first rolling material. In one example, the cigarette is filled to between about 0.1 and 0.5 mm beyond the distal end of the hollow body with smokeable material.
When using a second rolling paper with an area density of between about 15 and about 25 g/m2 the paper can be provided as partially translucent, such that a part of the color of the smokeable material can be perceived through the paper. By filling the cigarette to beyond the distal end of the body a very small pouch between about 0.1 and about 0.5 mm is created by which the user can inspect the content. This also allows the user to identify the content visually.
To practically arrive at a suitable physical deformation that remains closed a very specific twist may be applied to the second paper. In the production process a cigarette shell may be loaded with the smokeable material and subsequently pinched at the second portion of the sleeve by two fingers. After this, the body may be rotated around the longitudinal axis so that the twisting action provides a permanent twist to the paper forms a helical twist that closes off the sleeve at the second portion.
Suitable second rolling papers may have an area density of between about 10 and about 40 g/m2, preferably between about 15 and about 25 g/m2, wherein the second rolling paper is attached, such as glued, to the inner surface of the first rolling material such that the outer circumference of the sleeve and inner circumference of the body are the same.
Ideally the second rolling paper only extends between about 2 and about 0.5 cm into the body, preferably between about 0.9 and about 1.1 cm. So as to prevent that it functions as a liner for the first rolling material. The use of liner along the length of the cigarette is undesirable as this can cause poor airflow and uneven burning, thus reducing the quality of the cigarette.
In order to allow the comfortable manual creation of the twist without any material overhead the second rolling paper can be designed such that it only projects between about 1.0 and about 2.5 cm from the body. It was found that between about 1.2 and about 1.8 cm works best for most hands. For between about 1.4 and about 1.6 cm it was found that accidental pulling is intuitively prevented.
For marijuana carrying cigarettes the body can optionally be frustoconical. To prevent uneven burning the first and second rolling papers in their unrolled form can each shaped as an isosceles trapezoid. This allows the sleeve to also assume a frustoconical shape that extends from the body as a continuation of the divergence of the body.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated into and form a part of the specification, illustrate one or more embodiments of the present invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention. The drawings are only for the purpose of illustrating one or more embodiments of the invention and are not to be construed as limiting the invention. In the drawings:
On the left it can be seen that the cigarette 1 starts out having a second rolling paper 3.1 connected to a first rolling material 2, here a rolling paper having an area density of about 60 g/m2. The second rolling paper is glued to the first rolling paper along its width and has an area density of about 18 g/m2. The glue is a food grade glue G. A supporting tip 2.2 also is part of the cigarette and is here merely exemplary folded, see arrow R1, from a piece of paper to be a cylinder or hollow frustoconical curled supporting tip. The tip 2.2 is provided at the proximal end 2.3 of what will be the body 2.1 formed by the first paper after jointly rolling the components 2, 2.2 and 3.1 into a cone. The distal end here is the end that is intended for being held to the lips of a user. The second paper being attached near the distal end 2.5 by the glue G.
The rolling of components 2, 2.2 and 3.1 into a cone, more specifically into a frustoconincal shape, creates a shell; see arrow R2. This is an example of the shell according to the invention. The act of rolling also turns the second rolling paper into a sleeve. A first portion 4.1 extends about 1 cm into the body 2.1, and a second portion 4.2 projects about 1.5 cm from the body.
The body can be loaded, arrow F, with smokeable material A through said sleeve into the body 2.1. Filling can occur by machine.
The smokeable material is filled up to the edge of the distal end 2.5 of the body 2.1. In this example the body 2.1 is filled until about 0.1 mm above the edge of the distal end 2.5.
The second portion 4.2 is pinched by a worker with a first hand, and the body is cigarette is held by the worked with a second hand, whereafter the worker rotates the pinched part or the body around the longitudinal axis of the cigarette, such that helical twist closes the cigarette.
Embodiments of the present invention can include every combination of features that are disclosed herein independently from each other. Although the invention has been discussed in the foregoing with reference to an exemplary embodiment of the apparatus of the invention, the invention is not restricted to this particular embodiment which can be varied in many ways without departing from the invention. The discussed exemplary embodiment shall therefore not be used to construe the appended claims strictly in accordance therewith. On the contrary the embodiment is merely intended to explain the wording of the appended claims without intent to limit the claims to this exemplary embodiment. The scope of protection of the invention shall therefore be construed in accordance with the appended claims only, wherein a possible ambiguity in the wording of the claims shall be resolved using this exemplary embodiment. Variations and modifications of the present invention will be obvious to those skilled in the art and it is intended to cover in the appended claims all such modifications and equivalents. The entire disclosures of all references, applications, patents, and publications cited above are hereby incorporated by reference. Unless specifically stated as being “essential” above, none of the various components or the interrelationship thereof are essential to the operation of the invention. Rather, desirable results can be achieved by substituting various components and/or reconfiguration of their relationships with one another. The terms, “a”, “an”, “the”, and “said” mean “one or more” unless context explicitly dictates otherwise. Note that in the specification and claims, “about” or “approximately” means within twenty percent (20%) of the numerical amount cited.
