Document feeding apparatus

Information relating to the characteristics of the documents contained in a document cassette 16 is stored in a button memory 22 on the cassette housing and is read when the cassette 16 is inserted into a document feeding apparatus. The information is processed and correlated with data stored in the memory 74 of a control unit 70 to determine the optimum settings for a mechanism 10 for picking such documents. In particular, during a pick operation, a predetermined number of pulses are supplied to a stepper motor 50, so that when the friction belt 30 is moved into engagement with the documents of the cassette 16, an optimum pressure is exerted by the belt 30 on the documents in the cassette 16. A retard roller 52 is then moved to an optimum position in relation to the belt 30. In addition, the width of a gap between a guide plate 62 and the belt 30 is adjusted by moving the retard roller and the guide plate 62 to a predetermined width, which is optimum for accommodating documents of thickness equal to those in the cassette 16. Hence, the risks of mispicking of documents, double feeding and document jams are minimized.