Abstract: A failure diagnosing device diagnoses failure of a plurality of reduction gears of a mechanical apparatus which includes a plurality of operation parts, a plurality of motors, and the plurality of reduction gears. The failure diagnosing device includes an acceleration/deceleration period identifying module configured to identify an acceleration/deceleration period of operation of one of the plurality of operation parts, a motor current processing module configured to acquire a peak value of an amplitude of a frequency component of motor current in a specific frequency band of one motor that drives the one operation part, in the acceleration/deceleration period, and a determining module configured to determine whether a sign of failure exists in one of the reduction gears.

Abstract: A sheet tobacco producing apparatus comprises a mixer, a kneader, a crusher, and a shaping machine. The mixer mixes tobacco chips with auxiliary substances including water, to produce wet round pieces. The kneader has a pair of rollers for kneading the wet round pieces to form a sheet intermediate. The crusher crushes the sheet intermediate to form crushed wet round pieces. The shaping machine has a pair of rollers for forming a final sheet product from the crushed pieces. Since the tobacco raw material is deformed from the sheet intermediate which is obtained after once kneaded, to round pieces again, it is easy to take the material iinto the gap between the rollers of the shaping machine, whicn increases the manufacturing speed of the apparatus.