Patent ID: 7484725

Claim:
An image recording apparatus comprising: a housing; a medium supply cassette open upward which accommodates a stack of recording media each in the form of a sheet, and is inserted into and removed from the housing substantially horizontally in a cassette movement direction, the medium supply cassette including: a substantially horizontal bottom plate; and a slant separator plate extending obliquely upward from an edge of the bottom plate; a medium pickup device which includes a medium pickup roller which gives a feeding force in a first direction to a topmost one of the stack of the recording media, and cooperates with the slant separator plate to separate the topmost recording medium from the rest of the recording media to feed in the separated recording medium; a U-shaped guide which changes a feeding direction of the recording medium as fed in by the medium pickup device, from the first direction to a second direction opposite to the first direction; an image recording portion which records an image on the recording medium as has been passed through the U-shaped guide; and a restricting member which defines a part of a feed path along which the recording medium is fed, which part extends between the medium pickup roller and the U-shaped guide, wherein the restricting member is configured to contact at least a part of the stack of recording media which ascends upward along the slant separator plate by continuing to move, by inertia, in a cassette insertion direction in which the medium supply cassette is inserted, in order to restrict the continuing movement of the at least a part of the stack.