Patent ID: 8777208

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a medium housing unit that houses a plurality of image formation media; an image forming unit that forms an image on the image formation medium; a discharge tray to which the image formation medium having the image formed thereon by the image forming unit is discharged; a feeding unit that feeds the image formation media one by one from the medium housing unit; a conveying unit that conveys the image formation medium fed from the medium housing unit by the feeding unit onto a conveying path extending from the medium housing unit to the discharge tray through the image forming unit; a counting unit that counts the number of image formation media discharged to the discharge tray within a predetermined period, by detecting the image formation media discharged to the discharge tray; a number acquiring unit that acquires, from an image forming job, the number of image formation media on which images are formed according to the image forming job; a feeding delay control unit that causes the feeding unit to feed the image formation medium in a small spacing mode under which a next image formation medium is fed during at least a previously-fed image formation medium is present on the conveying path and feed the image formation medium in a large spacing mode under which a next image formation medium is fed after at least a previously-fed image formation medium is discharged from the conveying path, by switching a feeding mode from the small spacing mode to the large spacing mode at a time when a count value of the counting unit reaches a threshold set to be smaller than an upper limit by which image formation is limited; a return control unit that, when a total number of image formation media on which images have been formed is smaller than the upper limit after the image formation media is started to be fed in the large spacing mode, switches the feeding mode from the large spacing mode to the small spacing mode so as to allow the feeding unit to feed the image formation media in the small spacing mode, the total number of image formation media being acquired by adding the count value of the counting unit to the number of image formation media acquired from the image forming job by the number acquiring unit; and a threshold setting unit that sets the threshold based on image forming conditions used for forming images on the image formation media.