Patent ID: 8511669

Claim:
A sheet feeding apparatus comprising: a sheet support portion on which sheets are stacked; a separation claw which holds an upper portion of a downstream side end of the sheets stacked on the sheet support portion in a sheet feeding direction; a feeding roller which is capable of performing forward and reverse rotation to feed an uppermost sheet of the sheets stacked on the sheet support portion, an uppermost sheet is drawn from the separation claw with reverse rotation of the feeding roller and the drawn sheet is fed along the upper face of the separation claw with forward rotation of the feeding roller; a sheet holding portion which is moved along a sheet drawing direction of the feeding roller at a downstream in the sheet drawing direction of the feeding roller, and the sheet holding portion presses the upper face of the sheets stacked on the sheet support portion to distort the uppermost sheet at a position between the feeding roller and the sheet holding portion by restricting movement of the sheet during drawing the uppermost sheet from the separation claw by the reverse rotation of the feeding roller, and a sheet holding position of the sheet holding portion is set to be closer to the feeding roller with decrease of stiffness of the sheets to be fed.