Paper sheet feeding apparatus for copying machine

Claim 1

A paper sheet feeding apparatus for a copying machine comprising a manual sheet feeding device having a manual feed roller and an automatic sheet feeding device having a cassette for holding a stack of paper and an automatic feed roll contacting an uppermost one of said paper sheets in said stack, support means for supporting said paper sheet stack in said cassette, bias means for urging said support means towards said automatic feed roller, a paper sheet detector in the vicinity of said manual feed roll for detecting the manual feeding of a paper sheet and providing an output signal in response to such detection and disengaging means responsive to said output signal from said detector for disengaging said automatic feed roll and said uppermost paper sheet when manually fed paper is detected, said disengaging means comprising a shaft, a lever fixedly secured to said shaft for contacting said upper sheet and means for rotating said shaft in response to said detector output signal to thereby press downwardly on said uppermost sheet to move said uppermost sheet away from said automatic feed roller against the force of said bias means.