US Patent Issued to Ricoh on May 20 for "Sheet feeder, image forming apparatus, sheet feeding method, and storage medium" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,304,762, issued on May 20, was assigned to Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Sheet feeder, image forming apparatus, sheet feeding method, and storage medium" was invented by Yohsuke Edo (Kanagawa, Japan), Tatsuya Sugawara (Kanagawa, Japan), Yohsuke Takamiya (Kanagawa, Japan) and Hidetoshi Kojima (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A sheet feeder includes a sheet loading tray, an air blower, a side air blower, and processing circuitry. The sheet loading tray loads sheets. The air blower blows air to the sheets to float and separate the sheets. The side air blower blows air to the sheets to separate the sheets. The processing circuitry ...