Paper feeding method and apparatus

摘要

A method and apparatus are provided for feeding the bottommost paper sheet one by one to a succeeding paper-processing step such as printing as extracted from a stack of paper sheets (1). The paper stack is supported by a front guide (2) having a pawl (4) at the lower end and a back gate (3) as inclined toward the back gate (3) and the bottommost paper sheet is attracted to a reversibly movable suction belt (5) while the remaining paper stack is pushed up by a lift table (15) to avoid contacting with the suction belt (5). Thus, one and only one paper sheet is extracted from the paper stack and conveyed by the suction belt (5) to be received by a pair of pinching rollers for feeding to the succeeding step.