Automatic document feeding apparatus

U.S. Patent Number: 5384631

Abstract: An automatic document feeding apparatus including pickup rollers for picking up documents, a document feed limiting device for limiting the number of documents to one when two or more documents are picked up by the pickup rollers, and a document thickness detecting sensor for detecting the number of documents passing through the document feed limiting device as a thickness of the documents. When the sensor detects that two or more documents has been fed, the document feed limiting device is rotated reversely to return the documents upstream in the document feeding direction. The returned documents are supplied again to the document feed limiting device by the pickup rollers. The document limiting device repeats its own operation until the number of documents is limited to one. If the sensor detects that the number of documents is one, the document is supplied through the document feed limiting device.

Inventors: Matsunami; Tokumi (Yokohama, JP)

Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Kawasaki, JP)

Application Number: 08/156,816

Issued: 1995-01-24

Expired: 2007-01-24

Classes: 399/370 ; 271/110; 271/121; 271/262; 399/45

Field of search: 271/121,122,262,258,110 355/308,309,311

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