Patent attributes
A sheet feeding apparatus includes a sheet stacking section configured to stack a number of sheets, a sheet feeding mechanism configured to feed the sheet stacked on the sheet stacking section one by one, and an intermediate conveying device configured to convey the sheet fed from the sheet feeding mechanism to an image forming apparatus. The intermediate conveying device includes a plurality of sheet conveying devices arranged in an intermediate sheet conveying path at certain intervals to convey the sheet fed from the sheet feeding mechanism, at least one driving device configured to drive each of the plurality of sheet conveying devices, and a plurality of sheet detecting devices arranged in the intermediate sheet conveying path at certain intervals to detect a sheet length by detecting at least one of a leading edge and a trailing edge of the conveyed sheet. The sheet feeding apparatus further includes a control device configured to judge the length of a first sheet according to signals sent from the plurality of sheet detecting devices at an initialization time at which the conveying operation for the first sheet is completed, in which when the sheet feeding apparatus and the image forming apparatus are mechanically connected and are allowed to communicate with each other, the control device stops a sheet conveying operation of the image forming apparatus if the length of a sheet is judged to be different from the length of the first sheet after the initialization time.
