Konica Corporation

Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc.

Konica-Minolta Holdings, Inc.

Hirotaka Kabashima

Toru Komatsu

Tetsuya Ishikawa

Kouki Takahashi

Tatsuya Nagase

Hiroyuki Takagiwa

Hiroshi Isokawa

Ritsuo Fujii

Kiyohari Nakagama

Sunao Kawada

Kunio Akimoto

Kan Miyake

Azusa Nakamura

Naoki Watanabe

Toru Yamaguchi

An image forming apparatus for forming a toner image on an image carrier and transferring the toner image to a recording medium including a developing device, cleaning device, first toner conveyer, second toner conveyer, third toner conveyer, and a controller for controlling whether the toner removed by the cleaning device is to be conveyed by the second toner conveyer on the basis of an amount of new toner conveyed to the developing device by the third toner conveyer.

Image forming apparatus

Image forming apparatus and image forming method

An image forming apparatus having a photoconductor for carrying a toner image; a transfer device, provided with a discharge wire, for transferring the toner image onto a transfer material through discharge in a transfer area, after a transfer material is superposed with the photoconductor; a transfer-exposure device for carrying out light exposure of a surface of the photoconductor superposed with the transfer material, in the transfer area; a separator for separating the transfer material from the photoconductor after the toner image is transferred; and a controller for controlling the image forming apparatus. The controller controls such that light from the transfer-exposure device is applied to the photoconductor surface for the first time when the photoconductor surface superposed with the transfer material has reached the transfer area.

Image forming apparatus having a transfer-exposure device, and image forming method thereof

An image forming method includes the steps of: forming a plurality of electrostatic latent images of a non-solid control patch by converting a reference input density; detecting a patch potential of each of the plurality of electrostatic latent images; calculating a density value of image data corresponding to a desired patch potential from the detected plurality of patch potentials; detecting a density of each of the plurality of non-solid control patches which has been formed by an imagewise exposure according to the image data of the reference input density obtained by the calculating step; forming an image by controlling an image forming condition in accordance with a detected density signal.

Image forming method and image forming apparatus utilizing a control patch

Image forming apparatus with blade and brush cleaning section

Image forming method and image forming apparatus

In an electrostatic recording apparatus equipped with an image carrying member having a surface where there is provided an image forming region on which the toner image is formed and the other region located next to the image forming region in the axial direction on the surface, a cleaning blade made of an elastic material comes in contact with the surface and to clean toner remaining on the surface after the toner image is transferred. The cleaning blade comes in contact with the image forming region and the other region and an edge of a portion of the cleaning blade substantially coming in contact with the other region is hardened by heat.

Electrostatic recording apparatus and cleaning blade

A positive-electrification toner capable being fixed with a hot roller having a fluoro-resin covering layer is disclosed. The toner comprises mother particles containing a resin and a coloring agent, and vinyl resin fine particles fastened to the mother particles by mechanical impact force, wherein the resin has a softening point higher than that of the resin contained in the mother particles and not higher than 160.degree. C. and the vinyl resin fine particles have a frictional negative electrification quantity against iron powder not larger than 100 .mu.c/g. The toner is used for electrophotography, electrostatic printing and electroststic recording.

Positive-electrification toner

Growing community of inventors

Tachikawa, Japan

Hirotaka Kabashima