Patent ID: 7540484

Claim:
A print sheet feeding module and a printing system comprising: at least one stacking tray; two sheet feeders each positioned at opposite sides of said tray that will direct sheets contained in said tray into different sheet feeding paths; said sheet feeders are each repositionable towards and away from each other to thereby feed different size sheets; said module and system providing for one print application an alternately sequentially feeding of the sheets to said sheet feeding paths in opposing directions from opposite sides of said tray; said different sheet feeding paths adapted to be directed and merged to a common bypass path for feeding to at least one print engine, said different sheet feeding paths merge the sheets in a same orientation in said bypass path before feeding to the at least one print engine; said sheet feeders comprising a nudger wheel and a retard roller with a mating drive roll to form a sheet retard nip for feeding said sheets to downstream take away rollers; at least one of said sheet feeders is mounted to a stray stack edge guide such that said at least one sheet feeder is coordinated with a resetting of the positions of said tray stack edge guide when different size sheets are loaded into said tray; feeding of a next or second sheet by a first one of said sheet feeders is delayed until a first sheet fed from a second one of said sheet feeders is in a downstream sheet path feed rollers; said sheet feeders comprising said retard roller and said mating drive roller on an end of said sheet feeders and on an opposite end of said drive roller are active liftable nudger wheels extending out over one end area of said stack; said nudger wheels of said sheet feeders alternately lift so that they will not both drivingly engage the same top sheet of said sheets at the same time; said liftable nudger wheels extend over one respective end of said stack; said nudger wheels lower onto an exposed portion of the next sheet in said stack to partially feed the next sheet to said retard roll and said drive roll; said retard roll and said drive roll do not overlay said end of said upper surface of said stack; said sheet feeders operatively connected to a controller that controls a start of feeding actuations of said sheet feeders including said nudger wheels.