Minolta Company, Ltd.

Futoshi Hamada

Tetsuya Sakai

Kazunobu Maekawa

Masaki Tanaka

Toshifumi Watanabe

Eiji Nakane

An image forming apparatus includes a transfer belt unit having a driving roller, a follower roller whose outer peripheral portion is formed of an elastic material and a transfer belt which is made of a resin and stretched between the driving roller and the follower roller. The elastic modulus of the outer peripheral portion of the follower roller is lower than that of the driving roller. The transfer belt unit is configured to be bent in the middle, or to change its direction in the longitudinal direction thereof.

Image forming apparatus with simple transfer belt tension mechanism

A tandem-type image forming apparatus forms a color image by transferring images formed by a plurality of image forming units set along a transfer belt onto a recording sheet transported by the transfer belt. The tandem-type image forming apparatus includes a plurality of detecting units, each detecting a toner image formed by a corresponding image forming unit to obtain the amount of toner in the toner image, a standard pattern formation controlling unit for controlling one of the image forming units to form a standard pattern to be detected by the detecting units, a sensitivity obtaining unit for obtaining a value as an evaluation value that is outputted by each of the detecting units on detecting the standard pattern, and an detection output adjusting unit for adjusting a value outputted by the detecting unit in accordance with the evaluation value. An image forming condition is set for each of the image forming units in accordance with the adjusted value, and image formation is performed under the image forming conditions.

Image forming apparatus having function for automatically adjusting image forming condition

A transfer device according to the present invention is comprised of a transfer material carrying member such as paper, a transfer charger provided in the transfer material carrying member, and an opposite member comprising elastic material opposite to the transfer member. The opposite member is movable to both a contact position with the surface of the transfer material carrying member and a separate position away from the surface of the transfer material carrying member. When the transfer material positions at the adsorption position, the opposite member is switched to move to the contact position from the separate position to carry a transfer material thereon. After the transfer material is carried, the transfer material is adsorbed on the surface of the transfer material carrying member.

Transfer device

An image forming apparatus in which a toner image formed on an image carrier is transferred onto paper held onto a transfer drum following which the paper is separated from the transfer drum, the image forming apparatus being equipped with a charger that charges a prescribed area of the image carrier before the image carrier is uniformly charged, a mode setting device that sets the image formation mode, and a control device that controls the output of the charger in accordance with the image formation mode set by the mode setting device.

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Toyokawa, Japan

Futoshi Hamada