Kyocera Document Solutions Inc.

Kyocera Mita Corporation

Ai Takagami

Masaki Kadota

Takahiko Murata

Yosuke Saito

Maki Ike

Nobuyuki Hayashi

Shigeki Tsukahara

Koichi Hayashi

Hisashi Mukataka

Yoshimi Shimizu

Satoshi Sunayama

Kiyotaka Kobayashi

Tamotsu Shimizu

Susumu Hanano

Mitsuhiro Goda

Kanako Morimoto

Hirofumi Tsuji

Chisato Hatakeyama

Kazuhiro Nakachi

Norio Tomiie

Katsuya Ota

Yasushi Imanishi

Kanako Kikuchi

A cleaning device includes a housing, a cleaning blade, a toner conveyance path, a conveyance screw, and a first flicker. The conveyance screw includes a rotary shaft and a helical vane. The first flicker includes a first base portion and first contact pieces and uses the first contact pieces to press the conveyance screw in a first direction away from a bottom part of the toner conveyance path. The first base portion includes a secured portion and a blade opposed portion. A reinforcement member is stacked on the blade opposed portion.

Cleaning device and image forming apparatus including the same

A cleaning device includes a housing, a cleaning blade, a toner conveyance path, a conveyance screw, a first flicker, and a second flicker. The conveyance screw includes a rotary shaft and a helical vane. The first flicker includes a first base portion and a plurality of first contact pieces. The second flicker includes a second base portion and a plurality of second contact pieces. An inclination angle &#x3b8;1 has a value between an inclination angle &#x3b8;2 and an inclination angle &#x3b8;3.

Cleaning device capable of preventing solidification of toner and image forming apparatus including the same

A cleaning device includes a housing, a cleaning blade, a toner conveyance path, a conveyance screw, and a first flicker. The conveyance screw includes a rotary shaft and a helical vane. The first flicker includes a first base portion and a plurality of first contact pieces and uses the first contact pieces to press the conveyance screw in a first direction away from a bottom part of the toner conveyance path. The first base portion includes a secured portion and a blade opposed portion. The first contact pieces are connected to an upper end part of the blade opposed portion. An elastic member is disposed between the cleaning blade and the blade opposed portion.

A mode controller outputs a characteristic value according to a DC component of a developing current measured by an ammeter at a predetermined measurement timing. The measurement timing is defined as a timing at which a non-image forming region of a surface of a photosensitive drum is located opposite to a developing roller in the entirety of an axial direction and an electric field in a direction in which a toner moves from the photosensitive drum toward the developing roller by a potential difference between a surface potential of the photosensitive drum and the DC component of a developing bias is formed in a developing nip part. A determining section determines an execution timing for a charge amount acquisition operation according to the characteristic value output by the mode controller.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes a photoconductor, a charging member, a voltage applier, a storage unit, a current detector, a characteristic deriver and a voltage setter. The storage unit stores in advance relationship information representing a relationship between an electrical characteristic of discharge products adhering to the surface and a proper inter-peak voltage value capable of properly charging the surface. The current detector detects a current value of a current flowing from the charging member to the photoconductor. The characteristic deriver derives the electrical characteristic of the discharge products adhering to the surface on the basis of an oscillating voltage applied to the charging member by the voltage applier and the current value. The voltage setter sets the proper inter-peak voltage value corresponding to the electrical characteristic derived by the characteristic deriver in the relationship information as the inter-peak voltage value of the alternating-current voltage.

Image forming apparatus having a voltage setter for setting the proper inter-peak voltage value

An image forming apparatus includes a photoconductor, a charging member, a voltage applier, a rubbing member, a process executor, a current detector, a characteristic deriver and a process controller. The rubbing member is arranged in contact with a surface of the photoconductor to rub the surface. The process executor executes a refresh process of causing the rubbing member to rub the surface for a predetermined time by supplying toner to the rubbing member. The current detector detects a current value of a current flowing from the charging member to the photoconductor. The characteristic deriver derives an electrical characteristic of discharge products adhering to the surface on the basis of an oscillating voltage applied to the charging member by the voltage applier and the current value. The process controller determines whether or not to re-execute the refresh process according to the electrical characteristic when the refresh process is finished.

Image forming apparatus with process controller that determines whether to re-execute a refresh process for charging a surface of a photoconductor to prevent image deletion

This electrophotographic photosensitive body () comprises a supporting body () and a photosensitive layer () that is formed on the surface of the supporting body (). The surface of the photosensitive layer () has an arithmetic mean roughness Ra within the range of from 20 nm to 100 nm (inclusive), a ten-point average roughness Rz within the range of from 0.2 &#x3bc;m to 1.0 &#x3bc;m (inclusive) and a mean spacing of profile irregularities Sm of 20 &#x3bc;m or less in the initial stage of use.

Electrophotographic photosensitive body and image forming apparatus provided with same

An image forming apparatus includes a high voltage generating circuit, a voltage controller, a current detector, and a recovery process controller. If two inflection points (O and P) exist, which exist on a characteristic curve indicating a relationship between the voltage value and the current value when the frequency of the AC voltage is set as a first frequency or when a photosensitive drum is rotated at a first linear speed, the recovery process is performed if a potential difference between a first inter-inflection-point voltage (OP) between inflection points and a second inter-inflection-point voltage (OP') between inflection points (O&#x2032; and P&#x2032;) when setting a second frequency different from the first frequency, or a potential difference between the first voltage and a third inter-inflection-point voltage (OP&#x2033;) between inflection points (O&#x2033; and P&#x2033;) when setting a second linear speed different from the first linear speed becomes a predetermined value or less.

Image forming apparatus having an electrifying member for electrifying an image carrier

An image forming apparatus includes an image carrying member, a driving device, a charging member, a cleaning member, a voltage applying device, a torque detector for detecting the torque of the driving device, a storage for storing a predetermined torque value Tc, and a control portion. The control portion obtains as Ton the torque when the charging voltage is applied to the charging member and obtains as Toff the torque when no charging voltage is applied to the charging member. Let the torque observed when no charging voltage is applied at an early stage of use of the image carrying member be represented by Toff(0), then, when the relations Toff(0)&#x3c;Toff and Tc&#x3c;Ton/Toff hold, the control portion determines that the degree of smoothness of the surface of the image carrying member is equal to or higher than a predetermined degree of smoothness.

An image forming apparatus includes an image carrying member, a driving device, a charging member, a cleaning member, a voltage applying device, a braking distance detector, a storage for storing a predetermined braking distance value Lc, and a control portion. The control portion obtains as Lon a braking distance when a charging voltage is applied to the charging member and obtains as Loff a braking distance when no charging voltage is applied to the charging member. Let the braking distance observed when no charging voltage is applied at an early stage of use of the image carrying member be represented by Loff(0), then, when the relations Loff&#x3c;Loff(0) and Lc&#x3c;Loff/Lon hold, the control portion determines that the degree of smoothness of the surface of the image carrying member is equal to or higher than a predetermined degree of smoothness.

Image forming apparatus provided with an image carrying member that has a toner image formed on its surface

An image forming device includes an image carrier on the surface of which a toner image is formed, a cleaning member arranged in contact with, for cleaning, the surface of the image carrier, a charging member for electrostatically charging the image carrier, a bias applying device, and a control portion. The bias applying device applies a charging bias having DC and AC biases superimposed on each other to the charging member. The control portion controls the charging bias applied to the charging member by the bias applying device. As the AC bias applied to the charging member, the control portion uses, in a first period from the start of use of the image carrier to a predetermined time thereafter, a first AC bias and, in a second period subsequent to the first period, a second AC bias higher than the first AC bias.

Image forming apparatus with charging member that electrostatically charges image carrier

An image forming apparatus () forms an image on a recording medium. The image forming apparatus () includes a substrate (), a photosensitive drum (), a heating element () that heats the photosensitive drum (), a light emitting element () that performs static elimination on the photosensitive drum (), and a metal member () that transfers heat from the heating element () to the photosensitive drum (). The light emitting element () and the heating element () are mounted on one of main surfaces of the substrate (). The metal member () is in contact with another of the main surface of the substrate ().

The image forming apparatus, which includes a plurality of photosensitive drums, charging devices that contact and charge respective photosensitive drums, developing devices that attach toner including a metal particle, which is a polishing particle, and develop latent images, and cleaning devices that remove remaining toner from surfaces of the photosensitive drums and allows toner images of each color formed on the photosensitive drums to be sequentially superposed on an intermediate transfer belt to form a color image, has a primary transfer bias control unit that switches polarity of primary transfer bias, except for a time of image formation on the photosensitive drums, to polarity equal to or opposite to electrostatic charge of toner in response to an average printing rate of each color of a predetermined number of immediately previous papers.

An image forming apparatus () forms an image on a recording medium. The image forming apparatus () includes image forming units (). Of the image forming units (), one or more image forming units are intermediate image forming units, and one or more image forming units adjacent to a side of the intermediate image forming units and one or more image forming units adjacent to an opposite side of the intermediate image forming units are side image forming units. The image forming units () each include a photosensitive drum (), a light emitting element () performing static elimination on the photosensitive drum (), and a heating element () heating the photosensitive drum (). The heating elements () of the intermediate image forming units receive supply of electric power different in quantity from that of which supply the heating elements () the side image forming units receive.

A photosensitive member refreshing device includes an image bearing member, an exposure device, a developing device, a detecting section, a cleaning section, and a control section. The image bearing member has a photosensitive roller rotatable about a rotation axis. The exposure device exposes the photosensitive roller to light according to an exposure pattern. The developing device supplies a toner to the photosensitive roller to form a toner image corresponding to the exposure pattern on the photosensitive roller after the exposure device has exposed the photosensitive roller to light. The detecting section detects the toner image on the image bearing member. The cleaning section cleans a surface of the photosensitive roller. The control section controls the exposure pattern based on a result of detection by the detecting section.

Growing community of inventors

Osaka, Japan

Ai Takagami