Sheet feed apparatus

A sheet feed apparatus including sheet support means for supporting a stack of sheets, a corner separator disposed at a corner of the support means, a corner of the stack being aligned with the corner of the support means and a feed roller disposed adjacent to the corner of the support means for feeding a top sheet of the stack of sheets in a direction such that a leading edge of the top sheet is separated from the stack by the corner separator, characterized by comprising:

• skew preventing means disposed upstream of the feed roller in the direction of movement of the top sheet for engaging with and preventing skew of the top sheet;
• and
• a register roller disposed downstream of the skew preventing means in the direction of movement of the top sheet;
• the skew preventing means comprising a skew preventing roller which is rotatable parallel to the feed roller;
• the skew preventing roller being disposed between the feed roller and the corner separator in a direction perpendicular to the direction of movement of the top sheet;
• the apparatus being adapted to feed sheets from stacks of sheets of a plurality of sizes, the apparatus further being constructed in such a manner that LT.gtoreq.LF, where Lmin>LR+LC+LF and Lmin=LT+LR+LC, LR being a distance between the feed roller and the skew preventing roller, Lmin being a minimum length of the stack of sheets in the direction of movement of the top sheet which the apparatus is constructed to accommodate, LT being a distance between the skew preventing roller and a trailing edge of a stack of sheets of said minimum length, LC being a distance between the feed roller and a leading edge of the stack of sheets and LF being a distance between the leading edge of the stack of sheets and the register roller.