Patent ID: 7334787

Claim:
A sheet feeding apparatus comprising: a sheet feeder that rotates a sheet feed roller in contact with sheets for printing by a motor to take out the sheets stored in a sheet storage unit sheet by sheet, and feeding the sheet to a predetermined registration position in which sheet transfer at a printing operation is started, said motor being a DC motor; a controller that controls the rotating/driving of said motor to control the operation of said sheet feeder, an operation state detector that detects operation states of said motor or motor load driven by the motor; and a reference position detector that detects that said sheet fed by said sheet feeder has reached a predetermined reference position in a sheet feed path extending to said registration position from said sheet storage unit, said controller comprising: a position control portion that performs a position feedback control to rotate/drive said motor in accordance with a deviation between the position of said sheet obtained based on said operation state detected by said operation state detector and a predetermined target position in a sheet feed end section from when said reference position detector detects that said sheet has reached said reference position until said sheet reaches said registration position; and a high-speed driving portion that rotates/drives said motor without performing said position feedback control to feed said sheet at a speed higher than a feed speed at a position feed back control in a sheet feed start section from when a sheet feed request is received from the outside until said reference position detector detects that said sheet has reached said reference position.