Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Kiwamu Morita

Yasuhiro Takai

Hisashi Yamanaka

Yasushi Matsutomo

Yoshinori Hayashi

Masatsugu Hatanaka

Haruo Sayama

Michihiro Yamashita

Yuriko Kamei

Takashi Kubo

Masanobu Deguchi

Tomohiko Okada

Takahiro Fukunaga

Jinichi Nagata

Yasuaki Fukada

Hideaki Hagihara

Masakiyo Okuda

Shinji Kato

Yasunobu Ohkawa

Michiaki Nishimura

Junichi Kajiwara

Takashi Makiura

Yoshinobu Okumura

Souichi Takata

Yoshiyuki Nagai

Showtaro Okamoto

Yukinari Sato

Disclosed is an air blowing system including: an air blowing device; a duct that guides air blown by the air blowing device; and a ventilation section disposed downstream of the duct in terms of an air blowing direction in which air is blown by the air blowing device so that the air blown by the air blowing device strikes and passes through the ventilation section, wherein the duct has a distorted portion where a part of an inner wall face of the duct located between the air blowing device and the ventilation section is distorted perpendicular or substantially perpendicular to the air blowing direction so that the air blown by the air blowing device flows perpendicularly or substantially perpendicularly to the air blowing direction. Also disclosed is an air blowing system including: an air blowing device; and a duct that guides air blown by the air blowing device, wherein the duct has an outer surface on at least a part of which there is provided a surface area reducing portion for reducing a surface area of a continuous face.

Air blowing system and image forming apparatus including same

An image forming apparatus includes a feeding portion, an image forming portion, a discharge portion, a paper transport path, a plurality of detection members, and a control portion. The image forming portion forms images on sheets of paper fed from the feeding portion. The path transports paper from the feeding portion to the discharge portion via the image forming portion. The detection members detect transport state of paper at respective locations on the path including the feeding portion, between the feeding and image forming portions, within the image forming portion, between the image forming and discharge portions, and the discharge portion. Upon detection of paper jam at any of the locations, the control portion displays, on an indicator, information identifying a location where the jam has occurred, and the image forming portion where paper is detected by the detection members, as locations of paper to be eliminated from the path.

Image forming apparatus

A toner supply device including: a toner bottle filled with toner; and a toner supply assembly mounting mechanism having the toner bottle mounted thereon and feeding toner discharged from the toner bottle to a developing unit and supplying toner to the developing unit in accordance with the amount of toner consumed in the developing unit for the process of printing, further comprises: a toner bottle releasing mechanism which, when the amount of toner left in the toner bottle has been reduced to a predetermined level or lower, causes the toner bottle to move in the direction opposite to the direction in which the toner bottle is set into the toner supply assembly mounting mechanism and separate from the toner feed device.

Toner supply device, image forming apparatus and toner shortage detecting method

A paper processing device includes a processing unit, a paper ejection roller, a sorting mechanism, a paper overlapping mechanism, and a control unit. The processing unit performs predetermined processing upon sheets of paper being conveyed one at a time along a paper conveyance direction. The roller discharges the sheets in the paper conveyance direction, after completion of processing by the processing unit. The sorting mechanism shifts the roller to and fro between an initial position and a sorting position in a direction orthogonal to the paper conveyance direction. The overlapping mechanism superimposes, between the processing unit and the roller in the paper conveyance direction, a predetermined number of sheets of paper upon which processing has been completed. The control unit superimposes a predetermined number of sheets of paper by operating the overlapping mechanism, before shifting the roller from the initial position to the sorting position with the sorting mechanism.

Paper processing device, paper processing method and image forming apparatus

A two-side image forming apparatus of the present invention is provided with a first sheet-transferring path, for use in one-side image formation, for transferring, to a printed sheet storage section via an image transcribing section, a sheet supplied from an unprinted sheet storage section; and a second sheet-transferring path, connected to the first sheet-transferring path, for supplying a tuned-over one-side printed sheet to the image transcribing section, the two-image forming apparatus being controlled so that a plurality of sheets are transferred concurrently in an overall sheet-transferring path when performing two-side image forming operation, the overall sheet-transferring path including the first sheet-transferring path and the second sheet-transferring path. With this arrangement, it is possible to attain a significant improvement in process efficiency.

Two-side image forming apparatus

Featured are a system and method for designing a gear driving system. The designing system includes a characteristic setting section, calculating section and comparing section. The calculating section simulates an oscillation that is caused in the final gear of the gear driving system, based on the gear characteristic value(s) set in the characteristic setting section. The comparing section judges whether or not the frequency mid amplitude of the oscillation obtained by the simulation fall within an acceptable range. If the frequency and amplitude do not fall within the acceptable range, the characteristic changing section changes the setting of a gear characteristic value, and the processes of the calculating section and the comparing section, as well as that of the characteristic changing section are repeated until it is judged that one of the frequency or amplitude of the simulated oscillation falls within the acceptable range.

Gear-driving-system designing system

The object of the invention is to identify accurately which of the plurality of image types each pixel in a document image is included by a small circuit structure. When spacial filtering process is performed to the image signals of a photograph region and a letter region shown by use of a filter with a filter coefficient having a sum of &minus;1 as shown, the image signals shown will be intensified, and by binary coding the same with a threshold &ldquo;0&rdquo;, an edge detection result could be gained, with no edge portion detected in the photograph region. Therefore, in the identification circuit of the image processing device, the identification on whether or not the observation pixel is included in the photograph region could be easily and accurately be performed based on whether or not the edge portion exists in the local block.

Image processing device

A document scanning unit is disposed so that a scanning direction of a document on a table glass by a lamp unit is equal to a longitudinal direction of a photoreceptor drum provided in a mechanism unit. A face-down tray is mounted above the document scanning unit, and a face-up tray is positioned on a side of the apparatus opposite to the face-down tray with respect to the mechanism unit. The discharge-opening switching section switches the discharge openings so that a recording sheet is discharged to the face-down tray in a printer mode, or to the face-up tray in a copy mode. This structure enables a reduction in the size of an image forming apparatus by decreasing the width of the apparatus without increasing the height thereof. Moreover, with this structure, it is possible to perform the discharge of sheets according to operation modes, namely the printer mode and the copy mode.

Digital image forming apparatus

A document feeder includes: a document detecting device arranged on the top of the copier body, for detecting a document inserted from the outside; a feed roller arranged adjacent to the document detecting device, on the top of the copier body, for feeding an inserted document into a space between the original table and the original cover, in response to the detection of a document by the document detecting device; and an original cover lifting device arranged on the top of the copier body, for lifting the original cover to create a gap between the original table and the original cover, in response to the detection of a document by the document detecting device. Alternatively, the feed roller further has a rotary cam on its shaft, so that the cam rotates to lift the original cover up as the feed roller rotates in the document feeding direction. Then, after the document is fed in place, the feed roller is reversely rotated in a constant time, whereby the document cover is sunk to press the document onto the original table.

Document feeder and cover for an image forming apparatus

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Osaka, Japan

Kiwamu Morita