In this paper, a disc cutter with double vertical shafts is designed to cut the tobacco stalks. The single factor and orthogonal experiments are carried out in the self-made tobacco stem cutting device for the factors of the cutting speed, the forward speed of the device, and the radial overlap gap between the active plate and the driven knife plate, etc. By the analysis of the single factor experiment, it is shown that the power consumption is 1 718.8 W, and the cutting rate is 94.33% at the cutting speed of 350 r/min. When the radial overlap gap between the active plate and the driven knife plate is 15 mm, the power consumption is 1 500.73 W and the cutting rate is 95.6%. If the forward speed of the device is 0.6 m /s, the power consumption is 1 608.13 W and the cutting rate is 96.83%. Orthogonal experiment results show that the lowest power consumption of 1 480.26 W and the highest cutting rate of 97.21% could be achieved with the radial overlap gap of 15 mm between the active plate and the driven knife plate when the forward speed of the device is 0.6 m/s.