PURPOSE: To eliminate wastefulness in the printing motions and perform printing quickly by moving a sheet feed lever toward a sheet feeding means in the period from a printing sheet being fed till completion of sheet exhaustion, or at a moment soon after the sheet is exhausted, and sensing whether or not any printing sheet exists using a sensor.

CONSTITUTION: When a printer 1 is going to start, a sheet feed lever 4 rises to put the overmost printing sheet 3 solely in pressure attachment with a rubber belt 23 of a sheet feeding means 5, so that printing sheet 3 is sent out of a feeder tray 2. Then the lever 4 is sunk. The printing sheet 3 sent out is wrapped on a platen 6 and passed to a discharged paper tray 9. At this time, a thermal head 8 moves, and an ink ribbon 7 is overlapped on the printing sheet 3, and the ink is transcribed thermally. When the printing sheet 3 is exhausted, therein, the lever 4 is raised again, and a pair of sensors 11, 12 arranged near the sheet feeding means 5 sense whether the feeder tray 2 contains any printing sheet 3.