Sheet feeder and image forming apparatus incorporating same

Abstract

A sheet feeder attracts an uppermost sheet of a sheet stack of a plurality of stacked sheets, and feeds the sheet in a sheet feeding direction. The sheet feeder includes an endless belt, a charging device, and a control device. The endless belt is made of a dielectric material, passes over upstream and downstream rollers, and is disposed above the sheet stack to face the sheet stack. The charging device applies an alternating voltage to an outer circumferential surface of the endless belt to form thereon alternating charge patterns. The control device separately controls the respective rotation states of the upstream and downstream rollers to make a sheet contact surface of the endless belt go slack in sheet attraction and make the sheet contact surface of the endless belt taut with tension into a substantially flat surface in sheet conveyance.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.