Patent ID: 7384031

Claim:
An apparatus for separating and feeding flat products from a stack of flat products, comprising: a pivoting and articulating sucker bar having at least one sucker mounted thereon, the sucker bar arranged to pivot around a cam profile mounted to one side of and above a lowermost product in the stack, the sucker bar further arranged to periodically pivot up, articulate nonlinearly toward and make contact with a leading edge of such lowermost product and then to pivot down, articulate away and pull down and away such edge by suction to create a gap between such lowermost product and a next lowermost product in the stack; and a reciprocating and articulating pusher blade arranged to push nonlinearly into such gap, and nonlinearly articulate down, in timed relationship with the sucker bar, to further separate such lowermost product from such next lowermost product, and to push down such leading edge to bring such edge to within range of a gripper.