Paper feeding apparatus

A paper feeding apparatus in which the lowermost one of a plurality of pasteboards placed in a stacked manner with the leading ends in contact with a reference plane of a guide plate that is provided at a position close to a rear portion of a paper feeding table with a clearance gap over the paper feeding table is sucked by a suction unit provided under the paper feeding table and, at the same time, fed by a paper feed roll with a portion of a peripheral surface thereof exposed through the paper feeding table intermittently one by one through the clearance gap of the guide plate toward a next-process device, wherein

• the paper feed roll includes ones provided via shafts in a width direction of the paper feeding table according to a size of the pasteboards in a width direction and a movement direction and arranged in a plurality of rows corresponding to the respective shafts followed by and following the guide plate, the rows being coupled to separate servomotors via the respective shafts, and wherein
• the servomotors are controlled independently, and
• at least the servomotors just followed by and just following the guide plate are controlled so to be accelerated synchronously and rapidly from a stopped state to a high rotational speed, while controlled so to be decelerated from the high rotational speed to be stopped rapidly and respectively when the paper feed rolls in the rows coupled via the shafts to each of the servomotors are determined not to be in contact with the lowermost pasteboard.