摘要 |
There is disclosed apparatus for feeding sheet material (S) sequentially on demand to the take-up mechanism (12) of processing machinery, the apparatus comprising a feed table (14) having a gate (11) and upon which the sheets (S) may be stacked against the gate (11) which allows only the lowermost sheet to pass therebeneath, a bed of rollers within the surface of the table (14) which may be rotatably driven to advance the lowermost sheet beneath the gate (11) to the take-up mechanism (12) when forward drive to the rollers is arrested and means to allow the rollers to free-wheel once the lowermost sheet is being advanced thereover by said take-up mechanism (12) and means for restraining freewheeling over run of the rollers. Also disclosed is the processing of sheets which are longer in length than the circumference of a tool-carrying roll set (12) used to process the sheet (S), the difference being accommodated by transferring sheet feed through the nip (N) between the roll set (12) and a separate servo-controlled drive (14) upstream of the nip (N). <IMAGE> |