Cloth spreading apparatus

A cloth spreading apparatus comprising:

• a spreading unit having a pair of spreading clamps that grasps adjacent corners of a fed cloth and spreads at least an upper-side part of the cloth between the corners in a right-left direction;
• and
• an ejection unit having:
• an intermediate movable body that, while moving backward from a forward position, releases the upper-side part of the cloth that the intermediate movable body has received from the pair of spreading clamps in the forward position and held onto an upper surface by sucking;
• and
• a belt conveyor that receives the upper-side part of the cloth having been released by the intermediate movable body, and pulls in the upper-side part and also sequentially pulls up the rest of the cloth under the upper-side part to eject the entire cloth backward,
• the cloth spreading apparatus being characterized in that the ejection unit has:
• a large number of suction holes that are dispersedly disposed in the upper surface of the intermediate movable body, at least over a lateral range corresponding to a set maximum lateral width of the upper-side part of the cloth, and allow communication between an inside and an outside of the intermediate movable body;
• a negative pressure source that sucks out air inside the intermediate movable body to form a negative pressure region inside the intermediate movable body;
• and
• sucking force maintaining means that maintains a sucking force with which the suction holes suck the upper-side part of the cloth, regardless of whether the lateral width of the upper-side part of the cloth is large or small.