Patent ID: 8070152

Claim:
A sheet supplying unit that supplies sheets comprising: a sheet accommodation tray that accommodates the sheets in a stacked state, the sheets including a first sheet which is an uppermost sheet in the stack of the sheets and a second sheet which is immediately below the first sheet; a pick-up roller that conveys the sheets in a sheet conveying direction; a detection sensor that detects passage of the sheets and is disposed downstream of the pick-up roller in the sheet conveying direction; and a control unit that controls operations of the pick-up roller in accordance with outputs from the detection sensor, the control unit comprising: a driving section that drives the pick-up roller to start conveying the second sheet concurrently with a time when the detection sensor detects a trailing edge of the first sheet and to continue to convey the second sheet until a time when the detection sensor detects a leading edge of the second sheet, if the second sheet is to be fed; a suspending section that temporarily stops driving the pick-up roller to suspend conveying the second sheet for a time period Î±-Î² when the detection sensor detects the leading edge of the second sheet, a being a predetermined time period, and Î² being a time period from the time when the detection sensor detects the trailing edge of the first sheet to the time when the detection sensor detects the leading edge of the second sheet; and a resuming section that resumes driving the pick-up roller to convey the second sheet after suspending for the time period Î±-Î².