Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc.

Ikuko Kanazawa

Yoshiki Nakane

Kuniaki Kashiwakura

Hirofumi Nakagawa

A solid lubricant-coating device is provided with a solid lubricant to be applied to the surface of a latent image-supporting member; a supply roller for scraping and supplying the solid lubricant onto the surface of the latent image-supporting member by self rotation; a pressing unit for pressing the solid lubricant onto the supply roller; a flattening unit for forming a thin film of the supplied solid lubricant on the surface of the latent image-supporting member; and a cleaning unit for removing the residual toner on the surface of the latent image-supporting member and recovering the solid lubricant thin film on the surface of the latent image-supporting member, wherein, when a thickness of the solid lubricant thin film immediately before the supply roller in the rotation direction of the latent image-supporting member is designated as thickness A (nm) and a thickness immediately after the flattening unit is designated as thickness B (nm), the thicknesses A and B satisfy the following relational formulae (1) and (2): B&#x2212;A&#x2267;8 (1) and A&#x2267;4 (2).

Solid lubricant-coating device and image-forming apparatus

In the lubricant application device, including a brush roller which rotates while contacting an image carrying member and a solid lubricant, shaves the solid lubricant and applies the shaved solid lubricant onto the image carrying member, and a flicker which abuts against the brush roller and knocks off a developer adhering to the brush roller through a rotation of the brush roller, the brush roller has looped bristles implanted in a state of endless loop, and the flicker has a contact surface which forms an acute angle.

Lubricant application device and image forming apparatus

An image forming device includes a rotation member being held rotatably while making contact with an image carrier, a solid lubricant pressed so as to make contact with the rotation member, and a potential application unit for applying a potential to the rotation member, wherein the material of the solid lubricant and the material of the rotation member are selected so that the charged polarity of the solid lubricant charged due to the friction between the rotation member and the solid lubricant becomes identical with the charged polarity of toner, and the potential to be applied to the rotation member is set so as to be higher or lower than the surface potential of the neutralized image carrier so that the charges having the same polarity as the charged polarity of the solid lubricant are attracted from the rotation member to the neutralized image carrier.

Image forming device

An image forming apparatus includes an image carrying member which carries an image composed of a developer, a lubricant application device which applies a lubricant onto the image carrying member, and a cleaning blade which abuts against the image carrying member to scrape the developer. The cleaning blade is formed of a material whose tensile stress-elongation test shows that the definite integral of a tensile stress with respect to an elongation percentage on an interval between the elongation percentage of zero and the elongation percentage at which the stress is a predetermined value is a predetermined upper limit value or less.

Image forming apparatus having cleaning blade and method for selecting material of cleaning blade

Disclosed is an image forming method including forming a concave-convex pattern on a surface of a plate by pressing the plate and a mold having the convex-concave pattern on a surface thereof against each other, the plate having the surface made of a material in which a hardness changes reversibly at a transition point temperature, forming a plate image constituted of a concave-convex region having the concave-convex pattern and a smooth region in which the concave-convex pattern is erased on the plate by erasing the concave-convex pattern by selectively heating the surface of the plate to the transfer point temperature or above corresponding to an image signal, and forming an image on a recording medium by forming an ink image on the plate by applying an ink on the plate image and by transferring the ink image on to the recording medium.

Growing community of inventors

Hino, Japan

Ikuko Kanazawa