Top-O-Matic Cigarette Machine

I've used the Top-O-Matic to make about 10,000 cigarettes so far without any problems. After carefully inspecting the internal parts, no parts appear to be bent or damaged, but one part is starting to show a bit of wear. This part is called the "cam" on their enclosed parts list. The reason the cam has worn a bit is my fault, from overfilling the machine with tobacco and forcing the lever too hard. This causes the cam to push much harder than necessary which causes it to wear. Since the shipping cost for replacement parts is $7.50 whether you buy one part or 100, I am going to send for 3 cams since they are only about $1.50 each. These should extend the life of the machine by several years. I'm also going to send for 3 of the little black rubber tips that fit over the part near the injector tube which holds the cigarette in place. I have had this rubber tip pop off a couple of times and I want a few replacements in case the original gets lost. They are only 20 cents each. I have found a much easier way to make perfect cigarettes using this machine. As I said above, the reason the cam is showing wear is because of overfilling the tobacco chamber, which in turn causes you to use too much force pulling the lever to fill the tobacco tube. The lever should pull easily with very little force. The reason I was overfilling the chamber with too much tobacco was because if I used less tobacco the cigarette tube would not fill completely. I originally thought that this was a design flaw of the machine, by then I figured out the reason the cigarette tubes do not fill all the way is because their filters are only about half the length of a store bought cigarette. This means that although the cigarette tube is king size in length, because of the much smaller filter you actually need about the same amount of tobacco as in a 100 mm cigarette in order for it to completely fill. I have tried about 10 different brands of cigarette tubes, including the popular premier tubes, and all of them have a much shorter filter. There is an easy fix for this problem. All you have to do is remove the "spacer" on the top-o-matic, which changes it from a king size to 100 mm cigarette maker. Because of the little bit extra tobacco you can place in the chamber by removing the spacer, the king size tubes will then fill completely, making perfect cigarettes. Another "trick" to making perfect cigarettes is how you load the tobacco into the chamber. Cigar tobacco is chopped into small bits, whereas cigarette tobacco is cut into fine ribbons. Because of using cigar cut tobacco to make cigarettes, these small bits tend to fall out of the tube easily as compared to ribbon cut tobacco. The trick is to separate your tobacco before loading it into the chamber. If you pick though a bag of cigar cut tobacco, you will find that about 75% is cut into small bits, but the rest is cut into the longer ribbon pieces. Separate these longer pieces of tobacco from the smaller bits. When loading the chamber, fill it about 75% full with the small cut bits of tobacco, pushing it with your finger in the chamber to the front of the machine near the injector tube. In the remaining 25% of chamber space nearer the handle of the machine, put in the longer ribbon cut tobacco pieces. Now when you inject the tobacco into the tube, the longer pieces will be at the tip of the cigarette, keeping the tobacco from falling out. Hope this helps.