Minolta Company, Ltd.

Masaaki Goto

Toru Kasamatsu

Hiroshi Hiraguchi

Takatoshi Hamada

Takeshi Satake

Shigio Ogino

A multi-beam image recording apparatus changes a diameter of a laser beam using a beam diameter changing board, an order in which the line data is to be read from the memory unit, a rotational speed of a polygon mirror, and a clock frequency employed when the image data is read in units of pixels, in accordance with the specified resolution. Accordingly, the multi-beam image recording apparatus can switch between the resolutions without changing a distance between the centers of two laser beams emitted from an optical system. The resolution switching can be achieved with high accuracy at low costs.

Multi-beam image recording apparatus

The maximum number of documents placeable on a document platen may be detected by comparing the document size and document platen size. Then, a number of copy sheets equal to the maximum number of documents is chucked on a transfer drum. When the documents containing color regions and document that does not contain color regions are mixed among the plurality of documents placed on a document platen, a single scanning operation is executed for all document regions for developing a black toner, and three scanning operations are executed for documents containing color regions for developing a cyan, magenta and yellow toner.

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Toyohashi, Japan

Masaaki Goto