Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Chihiro Kikuchi

Shingo Sakashita

Tomoki Murayama

Hiroshi Hosokawa

Kenji Kikuchi

Satoshi Kojima

Shinji Tamaki

Junichi Awamura

Shunji Katoh

Hiroshi Ikeguchi

Michiharu Suzuki

Masana Shiba

Rintaro Takahashi

Daisuke Misawa

Masaya Fukuda

An image forming apparatus, including: photoconductor; charging unit; exposing unit; developing unit containing toner; transfer unit; and fixing unit, wherein the toner includes external additive and base particles containing binder resin, colorant, and release agent, the toner has melt viscosity at 100&#xb0; C. of 500 Pa&#xb7;s to 8,000 Pa&#xb7;s and the release agent has melt viscosity at 100&#xb0; C. of 20 mPa&#xb7;s to 30 mPa&#xb7;s, the fixing unit includes fixing member that has roller or belt shape and contacts toner image transferred onto recording medium, and the fixing member includes release layer on surface thereof that is to be brought into contact with the toner image transferred onto the recording medium, and wherein the release layer satisfies the following expressions:45&#x2266;&#x3b8;1&#x2266;60, and10&#x2266;&#x3b8;1&#x2212;&#x3b8;2,

Image forming apparatus

A toner housing container includes: a container body housing a toner; a conveying portion; a pipe receiving port; and an uplifting portion. Flow rate index of the toner measured by powder rheometer and represented by 'flow rate index=(total energy at a rotation speed of 10 mm/s)/(total energy at a rotation speed of 100 mm/s)' is in a range of '1.8&#x2266;flow rate index&#x2266;6.5'. Container body includes protruding portion protruding from container body interior side of container opening portion toward one end of container body. Uplifting portion includes: uplifting wall surface extending from container body internal wall surface toward protruding portion; and curving portion curving to conform to protruding portion. When the toner housing container is mounted on the toner conveying device, the protruding portion is present between the curving portion and the toner receiving port of the conveying pipe being inserted.

Toner housing container and image forming apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Chihiro Kikuchi