Sheet feeder
AssigneeToshiba Tec Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorMasanori Takai
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A sheet feeder includes a cassette for containing a plurality of stacked sheets, a holding member for holding sheets from above, a pickup roller which contacts the uppermost sheet from above during one rotation, thereby feeding and transporting the uppermost sheet, a rotatable subsidiary holding member which is rotated in synchronization with a rotation of the pickup roller and in the same rotating direction as the pickup roller, and contacts and holds the sheets from above during each rotation before the pickup roller contacts the uppermost sheet. The distance between a rotation axis and that surface of the rotatable subsidiary holding member which contacts the uppermost sheet is equal to, or greater than the distance between a rotation axis and that surface of the pickup roller which contacts the sheet.
Claims5
A sheet feeder comprising:
- a cassette for containing a plurality of sheets stacked therein;
- a holding member for holding the stacked sheets in the cassette from above;
- at least one pickup roller arranged on a first rotation axis extending in a direction perpendicular to a transporting direction, in which the uppermost sheet is fed from the cassette and transported, said at least one pickup roller feeding and transporting the uppermost sheet while the pickup roller is kept in contact with the uppermost sheet during one rotation of the pickup roller;
- and
- a rotatable subsidiary holding member arranged on a second rotation axis extending in the direction perpendicular to the transporting direction, rotated in synchronization with a rotation of the pickup roller and in the same direction as the pickup roller rotates, and contacting the uppermost sheet from above to hold the warp of the sheets during one rotation of the rotatable subsidiary holding member before the pickup roller contacts the uppermost sheet.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.