This invention relates to a bill feeding apparatus which separates and feeds bills, one at a time, from a stack of bills positioned in a bill handling machine such as a bill dispensing machine or a bill receiving machine.
In a conventional bill apparatus, as shown in FIG. 1, bills 3 stacked on a bottom plate 2 of a bill accommodating section 1 are fed out by a feed roller 4 in a planar direction of the bottom plate 2. The bills are caused to come into contact with a friction member 6 provided in the peripheral surface of a feed-out roller 5 and are pulled out, one at a time, from a feed-out port 7 due to frictional force generated between the bill and the friction member 6. Then, the bill thus pulled out is transferred into a transporting mechanism 10 through a gap 9 formed between the feed-out roller 5 and a friction block 8 provided along the outer periphery of the feed-out roller 5.
Furthermore, a friction member 11 similar to the friction member 6 of the feed-out roller 5 is provided inside the friction block 8. The friction member 11 functions to separate the bills 3 one by one between the feed-out roller 5 and the friction block 8 so as to prevent such malfunctioning as a double feed since frictional force in a direction opposite to the rotating direction of the feed-out roller 5 is generated to act on the bill 3.
In order to prevent a double feed and jamming in the gap 9, it is necessary to set the distance S of the gap (measured radially) between the feed-out roller 5 and the friction block 8 in such a way that the following formula will hold: t&lt;S&lt;2t where t is the thickness of the bill. In reality, however, the bill varies in its thickness t, depending on whether the bill is new or has been circulated for a long time. Therefore, it is difficult to set the size of the gap 9 only from one viewpoint. Moreover, even if it is possible to once set the gap 9 at an appropriate dimension, the gap becomes larger as the friction members 6 and 11 are worn due to a repetition of feeding operations a large number of times. As a result, it becomes difficult to separate the bills, one by one.