Mita Industrial Co., Ltd.

Kunio Nakai

Masahiro Sako

Hiroyuki Hamakawa

Toshinori Nishimura

Sueaki Okamoto

Shigeo Kurando

Masahiro Higashitani

Yasuyuki Hirai

Shingo Mori

Hiroshi Kageyama

Tsugio Nakanishi

Yoshiaki Tabata

Yasuhiro Matsuo

Kuniaki Nakano

Seitaro Yoshida

Kenichi Ashida

Minoru Kishigami

Shinji Ogaki

An electrophotographic type image forming apparatus is provided with a base frame for supporting an image forming unit and an optical unit frame located above the base frame for supporting an optical unit, the optical unit frame having an extension portion positioned above the discharge tray. The apparatus is further provided with a reinforcing member attached to the optical unit frame. The reinforcing member has an attachment portion extending in a horizontal direction for reinforcing the extension portion of the optical unit frame, and a restricting portion extending in a vertical direction and having a lower end operable to come into contact with a specified portion of the base frame when the optical unit frame is subjected to an excessive load. The optical unit frame is prevented from deformation because the lower end of the restricting portion comes into contact with the base frame when an excessive load is applied to the optical unit frame, which assures high quality image formation.

Image forming apparatus having reinforcing member

It is a major object of the present invention to break down and level a heap-up of toner built in the hopper through dropping from the cartridge when feeding toner into the hopper and to prevent toner from leakage from the cartridge due to erroneous operation with a remarkably simple and cheap construction. Namely, the leveling member moves a plurality of number of times in line with engaging and disengaging operation of the cartridge for the hopper and opening and closing operation of the cartridge in the same direction of the shutter, thereby causing a heap-up of toner built in the hopper housing of the hopper to be effectively broken down and leveled. Furthermore, only when the shutter is in its closed status for the cartridge, the cartridge can be removed from the opening of the hopper.

Toner feeding device

A toner hopper which is arranged upwards of the developing unit is elevatably supported in the image forming device in the vertical direction thereof and the connection between the toner hopper and the developing unit can be cancelled by lifting up the toner hopper when drawing out the developing unit so that the structure of the connection portion therebetween can be simplified and the sliding portion can be eliminated to thereby eliminate wearing at the connection therebetween. Furthermore, an apparatus for automatically raising and lowering the toner hopper and an apparatus for maintaining the horizontality of the toner hopper when being elevated and lowered is provided.

Developer unit and a toner hopper for an image forming device

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Osaka, Japan

Kunio Nakai