Minolta Camera Co., Ltd.

Naoki Kubo

Takuma Ishikawa

Toshio Matsui

Yasuhiko Doi

Fumitoshi Atsumi

An image forming apparatus with a binding function wherein small bands of toner are deposited on paper sheets, a plurality of said sheets are then stacked and thereafter said small bands of deposited toner are fused, thereby binding said sheets. In order to form said small bands of toner on an electrostatic latent image carrier, the present invention is provided with a charger disposed between an exposure position and the developing position so as to be movable perpendicularly to the paper transport direction, an optical shutter disposed in the image exposure optical path and selectably operable, or a scale disposed at one side of a platen glass for preventing light from reaching the image carrier. Said small band of toner formed on the image carrier may be developed by a special toner such as waste toner removed from the surface of the image carrier after being supplied to copy the original document image, white toner, color toner, or highly self-adhesive toner. The apparatus may further comprises controller for controlling the apparatus so as not to form the binding toner on a suitable cover sheet of the sheet stack. The width of the binding toner deposited on the sheet may be controlled so as to be variable by changing the timing for transporting sheets toward a transfer station.

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Osaka, Japan

Naoki Kubo