Sheet feeding apparatus

Abstract

A sheet feeding apparatus with a sheet support tray, a rear vacuum plenum chamber adapted to acquire the rear portion of a sheet, a front vacuum plenum chamber positioned over the front of the sheet and adapted to acquire the front portion of a sheet, sheet transport means associated with the front vacuum plenum to transport a sheet acquired in a forward direction and an air knife positioned at the rear of the stack of sheets to inject air between the trailing edge of the top sheet in a stack and the remainder of the stack. In a specific embodiment the trail edge of a sheet in a stack is separated by the air knife, acquired by the rear vacuum plenum then acquired by the front vacuum plenum and transported in a forward direction. As the trailing edge clears the rear vacuum, the rear vacuum which together with the air knife is continuously activated, acquires the next sheet in the stack. In this way the speed of the sheet feeder can be very high since sheets are separated and acquired by the feeder simultaneously with transporting them off the stack. Preferably the air knife includes preacquisition fluffer jets to initially loosen the top few sheets in the stack and lateral converging air streams to facilitate separation of the topmost sheet in the stack.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.