Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.

Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation

Masayuki Hayashi

Yoshinori Shirasaki

Motohiro Kawanabe

Tatsuya Miyadera

Akinori Yamaguchi

Hiroaki Ikeda

Masatoshi Murakami

Kunihiro Komai

Takeshi Shikama

Takuhei Yokoyama

Yuusuke Kohri

Tomohiro Ohshima

Fuminori Tsuchiya

Motoyoshi Takahashi

Yasuo Yamaguchi

Toshikane Nishii

Yoshitaka Sekiguchi

Makoto Matsushita

Hideaki Abe

Kohta Sakaya

Shunsuke Hamahashi

Shinji Nishimura

Izumi Kinoshita

Susumu Miyazaki

Motoharu Muto

Kozo Kawai

Hiroshi Ikegami

Itaru Saida

Mahito Nunomura

Shosuke Akisada

Yasuhiro Fujino

Shinsuke Ooike

Takafumi Ooba

Hiromitu Inoue

Masahiko Morioka

Makoto Sakiyama

Daisuke Abe

Hideo Tomozane

An image forming apparatus includes a transfer belt, a plurality of endless rotational bodies, an image forming device, a pattern sensor, and processing circuitry. The image forming device forms correction patterns including a first pattern as a straight line pattern orthogonal to a conveyance direction of the correction patterns and a second pattern as one of a straight line pattern orthogonal to and an oblique line pattern inclined with respect to the conveyance direction. The processing circuitry causes the image forming device to form the correction patterns using a correction value such that the second pattern included in one correction pattern on the transfer belt is same in color and shape as the second pattern included in at least one correction pattern of a preceding correction pattern and a following correction pattern in the conveyance direction with respect to the one correction pattern.

Image forming apparatus and image forming method

An optical writing control device controls emission or lighting of a light source onto a photoconductor surface in a latent image forming process and a discharge process, by either setting a light emission time longer in the discharge process or setting a resolution in a sub-scanning direction lower in the discharge process, compared to the latent image forming process.

Optical writing control device, image forming apparatus, and optical writing control method for controlling light emission of a light source

An optical writing control device and method are provided, for controlling light emission of a plurality of light sources to form an electrostatic latent image on a photosensitive element, the light sources including a plurality of light emitting elements disposed in a line and classified into a plurality of groups, including frequency converter circuitry configured to acquire image information to be formed as the electrostatic latent image; and a light source controller configured to control the plurality of light sources based on pixel information generated from the acquired image information, wherein the light source controller is further configured to control the light emission of the plurality of light sources by classifying the light emitting elements into the plurality of groups, and shifting a timing of light emission from one group of the plurality of groups to a next group of the plurality of groups, and determine a common illuminating period for the light emitting elements of at least one light source of the plurality of light sources based on the shifted timing of light emission among the plurality of groups.

Optical writing control device, image forming apparatus, and method of controlling optical writing device

An image forming apparatus comprises: a plurality of exposure units, each of the exposure units including a plurality of light emitting elements that are arranged in a main scanning direction; a calculating unit that, with respect to each of the exposure units, calculates a pre-charge period that is a period during which a pre-charge is performed on at least any of the light emitting elements included in a corresponding exposure unit; and an emission control unit that, with respect to each of the exposure units, causes the light emitting elements included in a corresponding exposure unit to emit light such that a pre-charge period of at least any of the exposure units is shifted with respect to pre-charge periods of remaining ones of the exposure units.

Image forming apparatus and emission control method for controlling pre-charge of light emitting elements of exposure units

An optical writing control device and method are provided, for controlling light emission of a plurality of light sources to form an electrostatic latent image on a photosensitive element, the light sources including a plurality of light emitting elements disposed in a line, including frequency converter circuitry configured to acquire image information to be formed as the electrostatic latent image; and a light source controller configured to control the plurality of light sources based on pixel information generated from the acquired image information, the light source controller being further configured to control the light emission of the plurality of light sources by classifying the light emitting elements into a plurality of groups, and shifting the timing of light emission from one group of the plurality of groups to a next group of the plurality of groups, and determine an illuminating period for each light source of the plurality of light sources based on the shifted timing of light emission among the plurality of groups.

Optical writing control device for reducing driving power of optical writing device

An image forming apparatus comprising: a resolution conversion unit configured to convert the resolution of a pixel provided by input image data; a gradation conversion unit configured to perform matrix conversion onto the pixel; and a writing unit configured to perform a write operation, wherein, in the normal mode, the gradation conversion unit performs matrix conversion onto the pixel with reference to the gradation conversion table for the normal mode, and the writing unit performs the write operation of the pixel in a normal order that is the order image data being input into the image forming apparatus, and in the reverse mode, the gradation conversion unit performs matrix conversion onto the pixel with reference to the gradation conversion table for the reverse mode, and the writing unit performs the write operation of the pixel in a reverse order opposite to the normal order.

Image forming method for increasing resolution in reverse mode

An image forming apparatus includes multiple exposure units each including multiple light emitting elements, a reading unit that reads data to be used for exposure by each one of the exposure units, one at a time from the exposure unit by the time the exposure units starts exposure, a storing unit that stores the data read by the reading unit, and a transfer unit that transfers the data stored in the storing unit to the exposure unit by the time the exposure unit starts exposure.

Image forming apparatus, image forming method, and recording medium storing an image forming program

An optical writing controller controls emission of a light source device including multiple light emitting element rows each constituted by multiple light emitting elements arranged in a sub-scanning direction to form an electrostatic latent image on a photoconductor. The optical writing controller includes an image information acquisition unit to acquire image information on an image to be formed as the electrostatic latent image; a light source control unit to sequentially control emission of the multiple light emitting elements on the basis of information on pixels generated on the basis of the acquired image information; an error information acquisition unit to acquire information indicating an error of a direction in which the light emitting elements are arranged with respect to the sub-scanning direction; and an adjustment value generation unit to generate an adjustment value for adjusting a light quantity of each light emitting element on the basis of the error.

Optical writing controller, image forming apparatus, and optical writing control method

An image forming apparatus includes an exposure control unit that performs control, based on a shift-amount of an exposure position from an ideal position, the shift-amount being obtained from a detection-result of a misregistration correcting pattern image, to shift at least one of an exposure timing corresponding to first image data which is input to one of two electric cables in contact with a target electric cable and an exposure timing corresponding to second image data which is input to another one of the two electric cables, with respect to an exposure timing corresponding to target image data being input to the target electric cable both sides of which are in contact with the two other electric cables, among a plurality of the electric cables which corresponds respectively to a plurality of the exposure units provided for each of a plurality of colors.

Image forming apparatus

An optical writing device is configured to form electrostatic latent images on a plurality of photosensitive elements by a plurality of light sources. The optical writing device includes: an image-data acquiring section that acquires image data; and a light-source control section that performs light-emission control on the light source based on pixel data generated from acquired image data, and also performs a neutralization process on the photosensitive element by controlling the light source to expose the photosensitive element to light. In the neutralization process, the light-source control section divides a period during which light-on/off control can be performed on the light source, into sub-periods based on pixel data input to the light-source control section, and causes the light sources to be lit in any one of the sub-periods so as to always place at least one of the plurality of light sources in a light-off state.

Optical writing device, image forming apparatus, and method of controlling optical writing device

According to an embodiment, provided is an image forming device that includes: an image forming unit forming an image in a predetermined cycle in a direction orthogonal to a conveying direction of a printing medium; a velocity acquisition unit acquiring a conveying velocity of the printing medium at a position where the image is formed by the image forming unit; and a correcting unit correcting the cycle on which the image forming unit forms the image in accordance with the conveying velocity acquired by the velocity acquisition unit.

Image forming device and control method for image forming device

An optical writing device forms an electrostatic latent image and includes a pixel-information acquiring unit that acquires pixel information and stores the acquired pixel information in a storage medium with respect to each main scanning line; a tilt correcting unit that generates a tilt correction signal specifying a main scanning line from which the pixel information to be input to a light source is read out from the storage medium in order to correct a tilt of the electrostatic latent image; a position correcting unit that generates a position correction signal specifying a timing to input the pixel information to the light source in order to correct a position of the electrostatic latent image; and a pixel-information-input control unit that controls input of the pixel information from the storage medium to the light source in response to the tilt correction signal and the position correction signal.

Optical writing device, image forming apparatus, and method for controlling optical writing device

A data transmitting device is provided. The data transmitting device includes plural bundles of signal lines, each of which includes flatly arranged plural signal lines and which are overlaid in such a manner that surfaces of the bundles of signal lines are contacted with each other while the signal lines extend in a same direction, wherein signal transmission and reception are performed through the signal lines; a transmission timing adjuster to adjust signal transmission timing for each of the plural bundles of signal lines; and a transmission timing controller to perform time division control such that the transmission timing adjuster adjusts the signal transmission timing under the time division control for each of the plural bundles of signal lines.

Data transmitting device for adjusting signal transmission, image forming apparatus, data transmission controlling method, and recording medium storing data transmission control program thereof

An optical writing control device includes a light emission control unit that controls light emission of a light source to exposes a photosensitive element. The light emission control unit is configured to draw two patterns as patterns for correction used to correct a transfer position of a developer image obtained by developing an electrostatic latent image formed on the photosensitive element, the two patterns including a narrow width pattern where a width of the pattern corresponds to a width of a detection area of a sensor that detects the patterns, in the main-scanning direction, and a wide width pattern having a wider width than the narrow width pattern, and control the light emission, after calculation of a correction value based on a detection signal of the wide width pattern is properly completed, in a manner where the narrow width pattern is drawn upon the calculation of the correction value.

In the invention, an inclination amount of sensors is reflected in positional deviation correction patterns, and for correcting formation positions of images of various colors, the positional deviation correction patterns are formed on a conveying belt. The positional deviation correction patterns are detected by the sensors. A control unit calculates positional deviation correction amounts based on detection results of the positional deviation correction patterns. Based on the calculated positional deviation correction amounts, the control unit performs calculation for correcting the positional deviation correction patterns, and cancels the inclination amount reflected in the calculation results to obtain final positional deviation correction amounts. Skew correction is performed based on the final positional deviation correction amounts, and thus, the positional deviations are corrected.

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Osaka, Japan

Masayuki Hayashi