A sheet supporting plate is vertically movably provided in a sheet feeding cassette, and a controller controls a lifting and lowering mechanism which lifts and lowers the sheet supporting plate based on basis weight information from an inputting portion. A method is also disclosed for applying a heat-shrinkable band to a container such that the band is correctly conformed to the configuration of the container with the pull tab properly located for ease of identification and ease of removal. When applied to bodily tissues, current pulses or voltage pulses having the multi-phasic waveform provide increased specificity and sensitivity in probing tissue. Each finger is reversibly insertable into one gripper jaw and has a finger base with depression complementary to a respective cone. When an operational production server is connected with the service appliance, the service appliance can automatically copy its service data to the service application of the operational production server.