Patent ID: 7334786

Claim:
A sheet feeding apparatus comprising: a sheet feeding tray that houses sheets; a sheet feeding device that feeds the sheets from the sheet feeding tray one by one; a lock mechanism that locks the sheet feeding tray to prevent draw-out of the sheet feeding tray; an opening and closing unit that is pivotable in an open state and a close state, and that forms a conveyance path of the sheet when in the close state; a sheet detecting unit that detects whether a sheet is present in the conveyance path; a state detecting unit that detects whether the opening and closing unit is in the open state or the close state; and a control unit that, when the sheet detecting unit detects a sheet in the conveyance path, controls the lock mechanism to lock the sheet feeding tray, and when the state detecting unit detects that the opening and closing unit is in the open state, controls the lock mechanism to unlock the sheet feeding tray.