Sheet feeder for an image forming apparatus

A sheet feeder for continuously feeding cut sheets to an image forming section of an image forming apparatus, comprising:

• control rollers adjoining the image forming section on an upstream side of the image forming section with respect to an intended direction of sheet transport for transporting the sheets to said image forming section at a desired transport speed;
• control means for accelerating said control rollers to a first speed higher than an image forming speed for a desired period of time after a leading edge of the sheet has been gripped by said control rollers and reducing the speed of said control rollers from said first speed to said sheet processing speed before said leading edge of the sheet reaches the image forming section to thereby reduce a distance between a preceding sheet and a succeeding sheet, said control means further controlling said control rollers to stop or start rotating in synchronism with a rotation of a photoconductive element of the image forming section;
• and
• a transport roller located upstream of the image forming section and downstream of said control rollers with respect to the intended direction of sheet feed and rotatable at a transport speed substantially equal to a transport speed of said image forming section, wherein said transport roller decelerates a speed of the sheet transported by the control rollers when the transport roller grips the leading edge of the sheet, said control means controlling said transport roller and said control rollers such that after the leading edge of the sheet transported by said control rollers rotating at the high speed has been gripped by said transport roller, the transport speed of said control rollers is reduced to one substantially equal to the transport speed of said image forming section.