Patent ID: 8342510

Claim:
An apparatus for feeding sheets, booklets or the like, comprising: a stack loading section on which a plurality of thin objects to be conveyed such as sheets, booklets or the like are stacked and loaded in an up-down direction; a rotating member which is brought into frictional contact with the objects sequentially from a lower end side of the stack loading section, thereby extracting forward and slidingly feeding the objects; and an overlap feed limiting member disposed in front of the stack loading section to hold the extracted objects between the rotating member and said limiting member, wherein the objects which are allowed to pass between the rotating member and the overlap feed limiting member are limited to one by one, the apparatus further comprising: a moving base supporting the overlap feed limiting member; a fixed base supporting the moving base vertically movably; a main elastic member which is mounted between the moving and fixed bases in an elastically deformed state, the main elastic member imparting a main elastic force to the moving base, said main elastic force acting to press the overlap feed limiting member against the object; a sub elastic member which is mounted between the moving and fixed bases in an elastically deformed state, the sub elastic member imparting a sub elastic force to the moving base, said sub elastic force acting in a direction opposite to the main elastic force; and a deformation amount adjusting mechanism which changes amounts of elastic deformation of the respective main and sub elastic members in a non-hold state where no object is held between the rotating member and the overlap feed limiting member.