Kyocera Document Solutions Inc.

Mita Industrial Co., Ltd.

Hisayuki Tachibana

Hironobu Oi

Naoyuki Ishida

Tadakazu Ogiri

Koichi Yasuda

An image forming apparatus includes a plurality of photosensitive bodies, a plurality of illumination units respectively opposed to the plurality of photosensitive bodies, and each configured to emit static eliminating light onto a surface of the corresponding photosensitive body, a light emitter that serves as light source, a light guide unit that guides light from the light emitter toward the plurality of illumination units, a driving mechanism that switches between allowing the illumination unit to emit light and restricting the illumination unit from emitting light, to the photosensitive body, and a control unit that causes the driving mechanism to allow the illumination unit opposed to the photosensitive body being used for image forming to emit light to the photosensitive body, and restrict the illumination unit opposed to the photosensitive body not being used for the image forming from emitting light to the photosensitive body.

Image forming apparatus that emits static eliminating light onto surface of photosensitive body

An image forming apparatus includes a plurality of image forming units that charge a surface of a photoconductor to form an image, a static eliminator that outputs static elimination light to eliminate a charge remaining on the photoconductor after image formation by the image forming unit, and a controller that controls the image forming unit and the static eliminator. The static eliminator includes a light source that emits the static elimination light, a light guide unit that guides the static elimination light from the light source to the photoconductors, and outputs the guided static elimination light to surface of the photoconductors, and a light shield unit provided inside the light guide unit, or between the light guide unit and the photoconductors in an optical path between the light source and the surface of each of the photoconductors, and configured to transmit or block the static elimination light.

Image forming apparatus eliminating static electricity from photoconductor surface

A developing unit comprises a developer container having an agitation space for agitating developer therein and a toner hopper for feeding toner to the agitation space of the developer container. A lower wall of the toner hopper includes a toner drop port allowing toner to fall into the aforesaid agitation space. On a surface of the lower wall exposed to the agitation space, disposed is a partition wall surrounding the periphery of the toner drop port. The partition wall defines a non-agitation space. The toner is allowed to fall from the toner drop port smoothly into the agitation space through the non-agitation space which is not affected by the agitation.

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Osaka, Japan

Hisayuki Tachibana