Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc.

Minolta Company, Ltd.

Kyoichi Yoshizawa

Takanobu Yamada

Junichi Hashimoto

Hiroshi Mizuno

Koji Soda

Tomoyuki Imura

Yuusuke Morikami

Hiromasa Ueno

Yukio Yamada

Hideaki Katsuoka

A toner cartridge includes, a housing which forms an internal space for housing toner to be fed to an image forming apparatus and which has a filling port for filling the internal space with the toner, a divider plate which is movably provided in the housing so as to be able to divide the internal space, and a fixing portion which can fix the divider plate in a state of dividing the internal space.

Toner cartridge having a divider plate to prevent excessive refilling

An image forming apparatus includes a plurality of printing units each having an image bearing member for rotation about an axis and a process member which cooperates with the image bearing member in an image forming process; a transfer member for moving in contact with the image bearing member of each of the plurality of printing units, an image on each of the image bearing members being transferred onto the transfer member or a recording medium that is transported on the transfer member; a switch unit for switching between a contact state where the image bearing members in the plurality of printing units are in contact with the transfer member and a separate state where the image bearing member(s) in the printing unit(s) other than one of the plurality of printing units are separated from the transfer member; a memory for storing life expectancies of the image bearing member and the process member with regard to the printing unit(s) other than the one of the plurality of printing units; and a control section for controlling the switch unit based on a print job and the life expectancies stored in the memory.

Image forming apparatus

In an image forming apparatus in which multiple photoconductors for corresponding developers of different colors are disposed along a transfer belt or paper conveyance belt, the photoconductors are disposed at intervals that are each an integer multiple of the outer circumference length of the driving roller that drives the transfer belt or paper conveyance belt, and the distance between at least one pair of photoconductors is made different from the distances between the other pairs of photoconductors. As a result, in comparison with when all of the photoconductors are disposed at equal intervals, the degree of freedom in arranging the multiple image forming units that each include an photoconductor can be increased, while color shift among the developed images of the difference colors on the transfer belt or the like is prevented.

Tandem style color image forming apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Nagoya, Japan

Kyoichi Yoshizawa