Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Jirou Makinodan

Hiroshige Inoue

Ran Kudo

An image forming apparatus includes; a belt unit detachably mountable to a main assembly, said belt unit including a movable endless belt, a belt supporting roller, a steering unit for swinging the belt to incline relative to the supporting roller by a force produced by movement of the belt in a widthwise direction, and a cleaning unit, supported by the steering unit, for removing and collecting toner from the belt; a toner receiving unit, provided in the assembly, for receiving the toner collected by the cleaning unit; and a path member for guiding the toner collected by the cleaning unit to the toner receiving unit, the path member being supported by the assembly when the belt unit is not mounted, and the path member being supported by the cleaning swingably relative to the toner receiving unit when the belt unit is mounted.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming unit configured to form an image on a sheet, a fixing unit configured to fix the image formed by the image forming unit on the sheet, a cooling unit configured to cool the sheet having the image fixed thereon by the fixing unit, a curl amount changing unit configured to change an amount of curl of the sheet by bending the sheet having the image fixed thereon, and a path configured to guide the sheet having the image fixed thereon to the image forming unit, after the sheet is conveyed through the curl amount changing unit and the curl amount changing unit. The curl amount changing unit changes an amount of bending the sheet according to whether the sheet is stopped at the cooling unit or not.

Growing community of inventors

Kashiwa, Japan

Jirou Makinodan