Patent ID: 8091883

Claim:
A sheet feeding device comprising: plural sheet feeding sections for containing a stack of sheets and feeding a sheet, each of the plural sheet feeding sections including a sheet container containing the stack of sheets, a driving rotor, a first driven rotor contacted to the driving rotor to form a first nip, a feeding member configured to feed the sheet from the sheet container toward the first nip, and a second driven rotor contacted to the driving rotor or the first driven rotor to form a second nip; and a straight sheet feeding passage configured to feed the sheet, which is fed from the plural sheet feeding sections, in a sheet feeding direction, wherein the straight sheet feeding passage shares the second nips with the plural sheet feeding sections, wherein when the sheet fed through the first nip enters the straight sheet feeding passage and strikes the second driven rotor in each of the plural sheet feeding sections, the sheet is guided to the second nip thereof by the second driven rotor while curved thereby, so that the sheet is fed through the straight sheet feeding passage toward a downstream side thereof relative to the sheet feeding direction, and wherein among the plural sheet feeding sections, only the sheet feeding section located on an extreme upstream side relative to the sheet feeding direction does not have the second driven rotor, and further includes a curved first guide portion, along which the sheet fed from the first nip of the sheet feeding section is directly fed to the second nip of the adjacent sheet feeding section so that the sheet is curved at the curved guide portion while having a greater curvature radius than the sheet fed from the other sheet feeding sections toward the respective second nips.