Patent ID: 8201822

Claim:
A media-feed apparatus for feeding a planar medium, comprising: a) a feeder; b) a host tray out of which the medium is extracted by the feeder, including a feed edge adjacent to which the medium is extracted, a sidewall perpendicular to the feed edge, a cavity adjacent to the sidewall for holding the medium, and a spring plate wider than the medium laterally contained within the cavity for lifting the medium towards the feeder; c) a media carrier nested immovably in the cavity and laterally contained within the cavity, and including an edge guide positioned relative to the feed edge and the sidewall to prevent the medium from moving toward the sidewall, the edge guide having an alignment face spaced apart from the sidewall and positioned relative to the sidewall to orient the medium with respect to the feed edge, the alignment face including a print biasing edge; d) an alignment guide laterally contained within the cavity and having a media guide and a baseplate of a selected width greater than a width of the medium and disposed over the spring plate, so that the baseplate is lifted when the spring plate lifts, and the print biasing edge forms an acute angle with the spring plate through the travel of spring plate; and e) wherein the alignment guide is positioned relative to the alignment face and the media guide is positioned relative to the baseplate and the alignment face and is oriented relative to the sidewall to hold the medium so that the alignment face and alignment guide together prevent the medium from skewing with respect to the feed edge while the medium is extracted by the feeder.