Patent ID: 7396175

Claim:
A sheet carrier, comprising: an upstream side sheet carriage part provided at an upstream side of a sheet carriage path, the upstream side sheet carriage part including a pair of rollers; a downstream side sheet carriage part provided at a downstream side of the sheet carriage path; an overlapping detection part which is provided between the upstream side sheet carriage part and the downstream side sheet carriage part and is configured to detect an overlap of a front sheet and a rear sheet fed by a single supply path upstream of the upstream side sheet carriage part, and carried by the upstream side sheet carriage part and the downstream side sheet carriage part; and a driving control part configured to drive the upstream side sheet carriage part and the downstream side sheet carriage part at the time when the sheets are carried so that the sheets are carried via the sheet carriage path, and configured to stop driving the upstream side sheet carriage part and continue driving the downstream side sheet carriage part at the time when the overlap of the sheets is detected by the overlapping detection part, the driving control part is further configured to stop conveyance of the rear sheet and carry only the front sheet when overlap is detected, wherein the overlapping detection part includes an overlapping sheet detection sensor configured to detect existence of an overlap of the front sheet and the rear sheet, wherein the pair of rollers is a closest pair of upstream rollers provided upstream of the overlapping sheet detection sensor, and wherein a path distance L 2 between a nip position of the pair of rollers and a detection position of the overlapping sheet detection sensor is longer than a path distance L 1 of a head end position of the sheets at a sheet loading part and the nip position of the pair of rollers.