Patent ID: 7887043

Claim:
A feeding apparatus, comprising: a pickup roller that is arranged to contact a stack of sheets and rotatable to transfer one or more sheets from the stack in a carrying direction; a separator roller that is located downstream of the pickup roller in the carrying direction and rotatable to transfer one sheet at a time further downstream in the carrying direction; a brake roller that is arranged opposite the separator roller to define together with the separator roller a nip in between; a first sensor for detecting a transfer state where a sheet is being transferred further downstream by the separator roller, and a non-transfer state where no sheet is being transferred further downstream by the separator roller; a second sensor for detecting a first rotational state of the brake roller corresponding to a presence of more than one sheets in the nip; and a second rotational state of the brake roller corresponding to an absence of more than one sheets in the nip; a switch for switching the pickup roller between a contact state where the pickup roller is contactable with the stack, and a non-contact state where the pickup roller is not contactable with the stack; and a control unit for controlling the switch based on detection results by the first and second sensors to place the pickup roller is in the contact state only if the non-transfer state is detected by the first sensor and the absence of more than one sheets in the nip is detected by the second sensor.