Reproduction machine having a safe tiltable paper tray

An electrostatographic reproduction machine for producing toner images on copy sheets, the electrostatographic reproduction machine comprising:

• (a) a moveable image bearing member having an image bearing surface;
• (b) means for forming a toner image on said image bearing surface and for transferring said toner image onto a copy sheet of paper;
• and
• (c) a safe tiltable sheet feeding apparatus for holding and feeding copy sheets to receive said toner image, said safe tiltable sheet feeding apparatus including:
• (i) a tiltable sheet support tray for supporting a stack of sheets to be fed lead edge first from the stack into toner image receiving relationship with said image bearing member, said tiltable sheet support tray having a lead edge and a trail edge;
• (ii) a feed head adjacent said sheet support tray for feeding a top sheet of the stack from the stack;
• (iii) an elevator assembly for independently raising, lowering and tilting said trail edge of said sheet support tray, said elevator assembly including elevator drive motors, a controller, side frames defining lead edge elevator slots and trail edge elevator slots;
• and
• (iv) an overtilt safety sensor device mounted within said trail edge elevator slots and connected to said controller, for sensing overtilt of said trail edge of said sheet support tray, and for preventing resulting damage to the tiltable sheet feeding apparatus.