Powermatic III Cigarette Roller

 I've been smoking since I was 15 years old and I put away a lot of cigarettes through the years which is a pretty bad habit, not alone money going up in smoke, and is dirty and smelly. Anyways.... this isn't about me smoking, but about the Powermatic III Plus cigarette rolling machine.

Through the years I went through a lot of cigarette rolling machines from the very cheap rollers up until I got my Powermatic III Plus. I didn't buy my Powermatic III Plus, it was given to me as a gift which I hand now for at least two years if not longer.

In the time I've owned my Powermatic III Plus machine I have made 50,500 cigarettes, and yes, a few times I "jammed" it up pretty good. The idea is finding a good tobacco for the machine or any machine as far as that goes. I tried different tobacco's, some were ok, while other were to fine, to stringy, and some when smoked just burned up to quick. So, the best tobacco I found that works good in this machine is 4Aces tobacco. I can go through 16 oz. bags usually with no problems, though once in a while I will get a "jam" when I get down to the fine "shake" stuff, but it's not very often.

Ok, back to the Powermatic III Plus. As I have said, I really had no real problems with the Powermatic III Plus other then a jam now and then... it's going to happen sooner or later. At least I had no real problems until the other night. On a Saturday night the machine worked as usual, the next night, Sunday, I had a problem. Was I going to have to buy a new machine? Send it out to get it fixed, or what?

The problem I was having was that the machine would "pack" the tobacco, but it wouldn't eject it into the cigarette tube. The only way to get it to eject the tobacco into the tube was to do this... after it packed the tobacco and not eject it into the tube, I had to lift the hopper lid, then push the jam button on the left, then it would push the tobacco into the tube. Of course this got to be a pain in the butt real quick.

The following day I figured I tear it apart to see what I could see, if anything. I figured I could either fix it or destroy it and have to buy a new one. 

On the bottom of the machine there are 8 screws you have to remove (one is under the sticker) and the top of the machine lifts off. When lifting the top off you have to be careful because the counter button and the jam button just sit there and may fall out. Also on the bottom of the buttons is a little rubber piece you have to watch doesn't come off the buttons and you lose it.

After getting the top off the machine I was surprised at the amount of tobacco inside of the machine! There was a lot! So I took the machine and dumped out the tobacco that worked it's way into the machine and cleaned it up some. I also noticed there was (what I could see) three sensors in the machine which I took a damp swap and cleaned off. At this point there wasn't much more I could do with it but was thinking that maybe all the tobacco that was in the machine was effecting one of the sensors.

So after getting as much tobacco out of the machine as I could and cleaning the sensors off, I put the top back on and replaced the 8 screws. A little later, about an hour, I decided to go ahead an try making my cigarettes for the evening though I had no idea if the machine was going to work or not. Ended up I made 4 packs of cigarettes (80) and didn't have one problem, it worked perfectly.

So in the end I'm thinking the tobacco that got worked into the inside of the machine finally got enough tobacco in it that it caused one of the sensor's not to work properly. So, if your having a problem with your Powermatic III Plus machine, maybe it a good time to take the top off and clean out the lose tobacco inside and clean off those sensors.?

As I have said, I got my Powermatic III Plus machine as a gift. Before I got the machine I thought about buying one but hated to think of spending $200.00 (more or less) for a machine that didn't live up to the way it was advertised. In the end I'm glad I did get it as a gift and when the time comes that it does quit on me, I won't hesitate to dish out the $200 for another one.