Patent ID: 7775519

Claim:
A sheet feeding apparatus comprising: a sheet stacking section configured to stack a number of sheets; a sheet feeding mechanism configured to feed each sheet from the sheet stacking section; an intermediate conveying device configured to convey each sheet fed from the sheet feeding mechanism to an image forming apparatus, and including a plurality of sheet conveying devices arranged in an intermediate sheet conveying path at certain intervals to convey the sheet fed from the sheet feeding mechanism; at least one driving device configured to drive each of the plurality of sheet conveying devices; and a plurality of sheet detecting devices arranged in the intermediate sheet conveying path at certain intervals to detect a sheet length by detecting at least one of a leading edge or a trailing edge of each conveyed sheet; and a control device configured to judge a length of a first sheet according to signals sent from the plurality of sheet detecting devices at an initialization time at which the conveyance of the first sheet is completed, wherein when the sheet feeding apparatus and the image forming apparatus are mechanically connected and are allowed to communicate with each other, the control device stops the conveyance of a second sheet to the image forming apparatus if a length of the second sheet is judged to be different from the length of the first sheet after the initialization time.