Press
Various presses are used in a cigar factory and/or a tobacco warehouse. Hand powered presses are used to help give the shape to cigars that go into wooden or plastic molds. These presses are either vertical or horizontal. The horizontal ones are arranged between roller and buncher, so workers don’t need to get up from their stations to get cigars. This practice was developed in the Dominican Republic. Some larger factories use a pneumatic system to power the press instead of a hand crank. Hand presses are also used to make trunk pressed cigars, which are squared off on the edges. (These cigars are commonly, and erroneously, called box-pressed cigars.) Larger, hydraulic presses are employed in the tobacco packing area to create tobacco bales.
