Patent ID: 6969065

Claim:
A sheet supply apparatus comprising: a pair of transport rollers for transporting sheets, a sheet transport reference arranged downstream of the pair of the transport rollers to extend along a transport direction of the sheet, an aligning roller disposed adjacent to the sheet transport reference, said aligning roller receiving the sheet transported from the pair of the sheet transport rollers and transporting the sheet to the sheet transport reference to align the sheet, spacing means for setting the pair of the transport rollers to be in one of a sheet nipping state and a sheet released state, sheet detection means for detecting a length of the sheet in the transport direction, and comparing means for comparing the length of the sheet detected by the sheet detecting means with a length between the pair of the sheet transport rollers and the aligning roller, wherein when said comparison means determines that the sheet has a length longer than the length between the pair of the sheet transport rollers and the aligning roller, said spacing means is activated to set the pair of the sheet transport rollers from the sheet nipping state to the sheet released state after the sheet is transported by a predetermined distance, and when the sheet has a length shorter than the length between the pair of the sheet transport rollers and the aligning roller, said spacing means is activated to hold the pair of the sheet transport rollers in the sheet nipping state.