Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Nobukazu Sasaki

Toshirou Kasamura

Masashi Ohashi

Toshihiko Kusumoto

Akiyoshi Kimura

Takashi Ozawa

Atsushi Kubota

Yasuyoshi Yamamoto

Tatsuya Shiratori

Michiro Koike

Naoki Okuda

Yasunori Maeda

Seiji Sagara

Hiroyuki Miyake

Ken Tanabe

Minoru Nada

Kazuo Kagiura

Takaji Yonemori

Masamichi Ikeda

Nobuhiro Kasama

Hidetoshi Tanaka

Yoshikuni Toyama

Katsumi Munenaka

Masafumi Takagi

Tsunetoshi Nagata

Yasuhide Hishikawa

Toshiro Kasamura

Toshihiko Kusomoto

Makoto Masuda

A lateral shift preventing mechanism for a rotatable endless belt includes a tension member for applying a tension to the endless belt; a receiving member for receiving lateral shifting force from the endless belt; and a displacing mechanism for converting a moving force to the receiving member to a displacing force to the tension member to displace the tension member.

Lateral shift preventing mechanism for endless belt

A sheet feeding apparatus has a sheet container for accommodating sheets, a sheet feeder for feeding the sheet by contacting the sheets in the sheet container, a guide for guiding the sheet fed by the sheet feeder and being shiftable to open a sheet feeding path, and a spacer for separating the sheet feeder from the sheet in response to the shift of the guide.

Image forming apparatus

This invention provides a compact and efficient sheet sorting apparatus having plural bin trays arranged in mutually superposed manner, support structure for supporting the rear ends of the plural bin trays in movable manner, a spiral cam members for controlling the movement of the front ends of the bin trays with the aid of followers provided on the bin trays and engaging apparatus for facilitating the engagement between the followers of the bin trays and the spiral cam members.

Sheet sorter having movable bin trays

An image forming apparatus includes an image bearing member, image forming station for forming a latent image on the image bearing member, a conveying passage extending toward the image bearing member to guide a developing device, a first moving mechanism for engaging with the developing device in the conveying passage and moving it in a substantially horizontal plane, wherein the image bearing member, the latent image forming station, the conveying passage and the first moving mechanism are provided in a main body of the image forming apparatus, a device for accommodating a plurality of developing devices. The accommodating device is mounted to the main body, the accommodating device includes, a second moving mechanism for moving the developing device opposed to the conveying passage into the conveying passage in a substantially horizontal plane and an accommodating case having partition stages arranged substantially vertically for accommodating plural developing devices and movable together with the developing devices accommodated therein, and a driver for transmitting a driving force selectively to the first driving mechanism, the second driving mechanism and the accommodating case.

Developing device accommodating apparatus and image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus for forming a developed image includes a developing device for developing an image on an image bearing member, a passage along which the developing device is movable continuously between an inside position where the developing device is inside the apparatus and an outside position where the developing device is at least partly outside the apparatus, a driver for automatically moving the developing device along the passage and one or more pressing members for pressing the developing device toward the image bearing member. The driver includes a driving source and transmission which are operative to move the developing device in response to the opening of a cover which covers an inlet to the passage.

Image forming apparatus and developing device therefor

An automatic original feeding apparatus has a coordinates position detecting device provided with a supporting table for supporting thereon a sheet original of which the area during image formation is to be designated, a conveying device for directing the inserted sheet original to a predetermined position, and a feed device provided upstream of the conveying device and responsive to the termination of the area designation to change over to a feeding position and feed the sheet original on the supporting table to the conveying device.

Automatic original feeding apparatus having an image area designating

An image forming apparatus includes sheet accommodating cassette for accommodating sheets, a device for forming images on the sheets, a first sheet conveying passage for conveying the sheet to the image forming device from the sheet accommodating cassette, a conveyor for accommodating a bundle of sheets having been subjected to an image forming operation by the image forming means at first sides thereof in a form in which leading edges of the sheets are gradually deviated in a sheet advancement direction, and for conveying the bundle as a whole, a feeder, disposed downstream of the conveyor with respect to the sheet advancement direction, for feeding one by one the sheets of the bundle from the sheet closest to the feeder, a second sheet conveying passage merging into the first passage for refeeding to the image forming device the sheets fed by the feeder, and a confining device for confining the sheets of the bundle other than the sheet being fed by the feeder.

Sheet conveying apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes accommodating assembly for accommodating a plurality of developing devices on stages arranged substantially vertically and having first driving mechanism for moving the developing devices in a substantially horizontal plane, an image formation assembly for receiving selected one of the developing devices moved out of the accommodating assembly and for further moving it in a substantially horizontal plane, the image formation assembly including systems for forming images using the developing device, the accommodating assembly further including an opening for allowing a the developing device to be loaded into the accommodating assembly.

A multi-color image forming apparatus, for forming a superimposed multi-color image on a transfer material, includes: a latent image bearing member; device for forming a latent image on the image bearing member; plural developing devices containing different color developers for developing the latent image in different colors; device for accommodating the plural developing devices; guiding device for guiding the developing device between a first position within the accommodating device and a second position adjacent the image bearing member; driving device for moving the developing device between the first position and the second position for exchanging the developing device at the second position; device for discriminating the plural developing devices; and a second developing device disposed adjacent the image bearing member at a different position; wherein when plural colors are selected for development; a discrimination is made as to whether the developing device containing the developer of the selected color is at the first position or not, and if so, the developing device located at the first position is operated before the other of the plural developing devices, irrespective of the order of the selection.

Image forming apparatus with developing device accommodating means

A document feeding apparatus comprising a first original supporting device on which an original is placed, an original inlet port for receiving the original placed on the first original supporting device, a conveying device for guiding the original fed from the inlet port to a predetermined position and exhausting the original from the predetermined position, and a second original supporting device mounted on a housing of the document feeding apparatus and having an image area designation device for designating an image area of the original. In an image area designation mode of the apparatus, the original is placed on the image area designation device, a desired image area is designated, and the original is placed on the first original supporting device and is guided to the predetermined position through the inlet port.

Document feeding apparatus with image area designation device

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming station for forming an image on a sheet; a rotatable member for transferring the sheet in a first direction toward the image forming station; supporting device for supporting the rotatable member for displacement in a second direction which crosses the first direction; driving device for displacing the rotatable member in the second direction to correct deviation of the sheet in the second direction; and inlet guide for guiding the sheet to the rotatable member, the guide being displaceable in the second direction together with the rotatable member.

An image forming apparatus capable of reproducing in different colors a plurality of image areas selected from a plurality of different originals on a single copy sheet. The apparatus comprises a transparent original holder device on which is placed an original in such a way that the image bearing surface of said original faces downwardly; a first original placement reference indicating device disposed on the transparent original holder device; an original pressure device which is movable between a first position at which the original pressure device covers the transparent original holder device and a second position at which the original pressure device opens the transparent original holder device; an image area designation device which is disposed on the surface of the original pressure device and on which is placed an original with the image bearing surface thereof faced upwardly so as to designate an image area to be copied of the original; a second original placement reference indicating device which is disposed on the surface of the original pressure device and is provided for the image area designation device; and a scanning device for exposing and scanning the original placed on the transparent original holder.

Image forming apparatus capable of designating area to be copied of

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming station for conveying a sheet material along a lateral reference position and for forming an image on the sheet material; refeeding device for refeeding to the image forming station the sheet material on which the image has been formed in the image forming station; means, provided in the sheet refeeding means, for shifting the sheet material in the lateral direction from the lateral reference position by a predetermined amount, wherein the amount of the shift is predetermined on the basis of a change in a lateral dimension of the sheet material resulting from an image forming operation in the image station.

An image forming apparatus capable of effecting plural image forming operations on one transfer sheet includes an image transfer device for transferring an image on the transfer sheet, an image magnification changing mechanism for changing the magnification of the image to be transferred onto the transfer sheet, and a control device for controlling the magnification changing mechanism in accordance with deformation of the transfer sheet caused by an image forming operation on the transfer sheet, after a first image is formed on the transfer sheet and before a second image is formed on the same transfer sheet, whereby those images are correctly registered.

Image forming apparatus for forming a plurality of image from different

A sheet stacking device and an image forming apparatus provided with the sheet stacking device. The sheet stacking device has a sheet sorting function, and in addition, sheet re-feeding function so as to make it possible to produce a duplex copy or superimposed copy. It is further possible to use the sorter portion as a sheet feeding facility.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Nobukazu Sasaki