A process for detecting oil or lubricant contamination in the production of an article by adding a Stokes-shifting taggant to an oil or lubricant of a machine utilized to produce the article or a component thereof, irradiating the articles produced with a first wavelength of radiation, and monitoring the articles for emission of radiation at a second wavelength. The taggant can be in the form of a composition containing a Stokes-shifting taggant, which absorbs radiation at a first wavelength and emits radiation at a second wavelength, different from said first wavelength, dissolved or dispersed in an oil or lubricant.

The invention relates to a method for optical analysis of a component of an aerosol generating article, the method comprising:—providing a component of an aerosol generating article defining a first end and a second end, the component comprising: o an aerosol forming substrate; o a susceptor in thermal contact with the aerosol forming substrate;—providing a first polarized camera including a sensor to detect polarization information of electromagnetic radiation;—illuminating the component by electromagnetic radiation;—detecting transmitted, infected or refracted electromagnetic radiation from the component by the first polarized camera; —generating a first image of the first end of the component by the first polarized camera, the first image being formed by a plurality of pixels, each pixel of the plurality of pixels containing polarization information about the detected electromagnetic radiation; and—detecting in the first image a position of the susceptor.

A sensing module for monitoring dosage delivery of a vaporized material, and a portable vaporization unit including the sensing module, include a light sensor that detects disruptions in a light path across a vapor channel, the disruptions caused by the vaporized material flowing through the vapor channel. The light sensor includes a UV light source, which may emit 370 nm wavelength light, and a UV light detector that converts intensity of incident light in the light path into a signal. A microprocessor of the sensing module compares the signal to a baseline measurement to determine the concentration of a medicament in the vapor; then, using the flow rate and activation time of the device, the microprocessor determines the dosage and can perform monitoring and reporting actions based on the dosage. A measuring circuit measures fluctuations in resistance/impedance of a vaporization element to further determine flow rate and/or dosage.

Testing systems and methods are provided for a smoking article to determine a characteristic of the smoking article, such as density of a material used therewith. The testing system may include a test fixture and an electromagnetic energy generating device The testing methods may be carried out by subjecting the material to the electromagnetic energy and determining the amount of energy absorbed by the material.

A device for off-line detection of circumferential appearance quality of cigarettes includes a mechanical system, a vision system and a control system, where the mechanical system includes a hopper, a feed roller, an auto-rotating roller, an upper chute and a lower chute. A method for off-line detection of circumferential appearance quality of cigarettes by using the above device is further provided. The present disclosure can achieve detection without omission to obtain accurate and quantifiable detection results, and has high processing efficiency.

A cigarette filter inspection method of inspecting a solid flavor element to be disposed in a void between two filter plugs placed in outer filter wrapper, and the cigarette filter inspection method includes an illumination step of irradiating the void with illumination light, an imaging step of obtaining an inspection image of a region containing the void, a filler detection step of detecting the flavor element based on contrast between the void and the flavor element in the inspection image, and an inspection step of inspecting the flavor element detected in the inspection image.

A cigarette machine comprises a suction belt conveyor including a rod guide channel, wherein the rod guide channel is delimited on one side by a material-conveying suction belt. Two channel cheeks are positioned opposite one another and configured to adjoin the rod guide channel An electromagnetic measuring apparatus comprises a resonator. The resonator comprises a first resonator half positioned on the side of the rod guide channel with the conveying suction belt, and a second resonator half of which is provided on the side which is situated opposite the first resonator half. The first resonator half is connected to the suction belt conveyor.

Apparatus is disclosed for determining the weight of tobacco in a tobacco product (10), the tobacco product comprising a tobacco component (16) and a plurality of non-tobacco components (12, 14, 18, 20, 22). The apparatus comprises means (26) for determining the total weight of the tobacco product (10), means (30) for producing an x-ray image of the tobacco product, means (34) for determining weights of the non-tobacco components from the x-ray image, and means (34) for determining the weight of the tobacco component based on the total weight of the tobacco product and the weights of the non-tobacco components. This may allow an accurate determination of tobacco weight to be achieved. Furthermore, measurements can be taken where components are present which might interfere with microwave measurements.

The present invention relates to method for inspecting an inductively heatable aerosol-generating article (1) for the presence of a susceptor (21) using at least one sensor (110) that is responsive to the susceptor (21) being at least one of electrically conductive, magnetic or magnetized. The invention further relates to method and apparatus for inspecting an inductively heatable aerosol-generating article for a desired article alignment at a specific article location in an article manufacturing apparatus, wherein the susceptor is provided for inductively heating an aerosol-forming substrate comprised in the article, and wherein an arrangement of the susceptor at or in the article is asymmetric with regard to a length axis of the article. The method and the apparatus comprises usage of at least a first senor which is arranged and configured to detect at a first test site of the article location a presence or absence of a susceptor, wherein the presence of the susceptor at the first test is indicative of the presence of the desired article alignment at the article location. The first sensor is responsive to the susceptor being at least one of electrically conductive, magnetic or magnetized and responsive to the presence of the susceptor at the first test site.

Smoking-related article inspection systems and associated methods are disclosed herein. In some aspects, the systems include an x-ray imaging device configured to capture at least one image of the smoking-related articles, a smoking-related article transporting device configured to sequentially introduce the smoking-related articles into the imaging zone; and an analysis unit in communication with the x-ray imaging device and configured to analyze the at least one image captured by the x-ray imaging device for each of the smoking-related articles, the analysis unit being configured to execute: an inspection tool to determine values for one or more parameters of each of the smoking-related articles based on the analysis of the at least one image; and a comparison tool to determine an acceptability of the smoking-related articles for further processing based on comparing the determined values for the one or more parameters to ideal values for the one or more parameters.