Hewlett-packard Company

Matias Negatu

Algird M Gudaitis

Rick Minoru Tanaka

Ronald A Juve

Szymon Morawski

An apparatus and method for picking and feeding a single sheet from a stack. A pick roller and a retard roller are held together in a pick assembly, and positioned so that the pick roller is in contact with the top surface of the top sheet and adjacent a leading edge of the top sheet. The pick roller is driven to pick a sheet from the stack, pulling the sheet into the nip between the pick roller and the retard roller. The retard roller applies a retard force to the retard roller tending to resist the rotation of the retard roller as print media is driven into the nip during a pick operation. The retard force is less than a feed force applied to the top sheet by the pick roller as the top sheet is passed into the nip, the retard force being greater than a sheet-to-sheet frictional drag force between the top sheet and an adjacent sheet, thereby separating an adjacent sheet from the top sheet to prevent multiple sheet picks. The retard force is applied by a torque limiter incorporated in the retard roller structure. A suspension apparatus is coupled to the pick roller and retard roller assembly for permitting the assembly to move through a range of movement as the height of the media stack changes due to repeated pick operations, such that the pick roller is in contact with the top sheet for media stacks of varying heights.

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Vancouver, WA, United States of America

Matias Negatu