Feeding device and image forming apparatus

A feeding device configured to be connected to another feeding device and receive a sheet from the other feeding device, the feeding device comprising:

• a sheet housing unit configured to house therein a plurality of sheets stacked;
• a sheet conveying unit configured to convey either a topmost sheet positioned at top of the sheets stacked from the sheet housing unit or a sheet fed from the other feeding device;
• a sheet top position detecting unit including a contacting member that contacts to the top surface of the topmost sheet to detect a vertical position of the topmost sheet, the contacting member being configured to move between a detecting position where the contacting member is in a contacting position of contacting the topmost sheet and a non-detecting position where the contacting member is away from the contacting position;
• and
• a control unit configured to control a position of the sheet top position detecting unit from detecting position to the non-detecting position so that the contacting member comes above the sheet fed from the other feeding device when the feeding device receives the sheet fed from the other feeding device.

An image forming apparatus comprising:

• an image forming section that forms an image on an image forming sheet of a recording medium;
• and
• a paper feeding unit that feeds the image forming sheet to the image forming section, the paper feeding unit configured to be connected to another feeding device, the paper feeding unit comprising:
• a sheet housing unit configured to house therein a plurality of sheets stacked;
• a sheet conveying unit configured to convey either a topmost sheet positioned at top of the sheets stacked from the sheet housing unit or a sheet fed from the other feeding device as the image forming sheet;
• an air discharging unit configured to blow air toward the sheets stacked in the sheet housing unit so as to move the topmost sheet up toward the sheet conveying unit;
• and
• a control unit configured to cause the air discharging unit to blow air when the sheet conveying unit conveys the topmost sheet from the sheet housing unit, and
• further configured to cause the air discharging unit to stop blowing air when the sheet conveying unit conveys the sheet fed from the other feeding device.