Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Shinichi Kawahara

Nobuo Kuwabara

Takeshi Shintani

Daisuke Tomita

Akio Kosuge

Takeo Suda

Takaaki Tawada

Satoshi Hatori

Yuji Arai

Yoshio Hattori

Kazuhisa Sudo

Takatsugu Fujishiro

Keiichi Yoshida

Satoshi Takano

Shuji Tanaka

Tokuya Ojimi

Hiroomi Harada

Chohtaroh Kataoka

Teruyuki Kasuga

Yutaka Takahashi

Hirokazu Ishii

Naohiro Kumagai

Ken Amemiya

Masanori Kawasumi

Hiroshi Saitoh

Toshihiro Sugiyama

Shigeru Yoshiki

Norio Kudo

Yoshinori Ozawa

Hiroshi Ono

Hiroshi Hosokawa

Masami Tomita

Hideo Yoshizawa

Toshio Koike

Masayuki Yamane

Kiyonori Tsuda

Shinji Tamaki

Mitsuru Takahashi

Kaoru Yoshino

Shunji Katoh

Yoshiyuki Kimura

Kazuosa Kuma

Masato Yanagida

Takehide Mizutani

Haruji Mizuishi

Takeshi Fukao

Takaya Muraishi

Tsuyoshi Imamura

Hideyasu Seki

Junichi Terai

Yasushi Akiba

Kenji Honjoh

Kohsuke Yamamoto

Tsutomu Katoh

Yasuhito Kuboshima

Takuzi Yoneda

Takeshi Tabuchi

Ryohta Gotoh

Norio Kudoh

Shigeru Watanabe

Masumi Sato

Hidetoshi Yano

Nobuyuki Taguchi

Makoto Obu

Katsuhiro Echigo

Makoto Yasuda

Hideki Zemba

Ryuji Yoshida

Akira Fujimori

Nobuo Kikuchi

Yasuhiro Kawashima

Hiroshi Mizusawa

Nobuyuki Koinuma

Yuta Azeyanagi

Shinya Karasawa

Mikio Ishibashi

Hiromichi Ninomiya

Nobuaki Tomidokoro

Yusuke Ishizuka

Fumio Kishi

Masaki Sukesako

Shunji Kato

Hideaki Matsui

Yasuo Kawada

Tokuya Ohjimi

Masasumi Yahata

Kazuhiko Yuki

Tetsuroh Miura

Hidenori Sakai

Yuji Kitajima

Hidemasa Sato

Choutaroh Kataoka

Ryo Tanoue

A lubricant supply device includes a solid lubricant, a supply member contacting and rubbing the solid lubricant and thereby scraping a lubricant off the solid lubricant and supplying the lubricant to a lubricant supplying target, and a pressing mechanism pressing the solid lubricant against the supply member. The pressing mechanism includes a biasing device, and a plurality of pressing members receiving a biasing force of the biasing device and thereby pressing places of the solid lubricant at symmetrical positions with respect to a center of a contact part of the solid lubricant contacting the supply member, respectively.

Lubricant supply device, image forming apparatus, and pressing device

A lubricant supply device includes a solid lubricant, a lubricant holder to hold the solid lubricant, a lubricant supply member to supply lubricant to a lubrication target, a pressing member to press the solid lubricant toward the lubricant supply member, and a pressing force adjuster to change an amount of pressing force exerted by the pressing member.

Lubricant supply device, process unit, image forming apparatus, and process unit manufacturing method

An image forming apparatus including multiple image forming units; a waste-toner container; and a waste-toner conveyance device including a common conveyance channel member disposed in an arrangement direction of the image forming units and provided with toner inlets to receive the waste toner from toner outlets of the cleaning units, communicating channel members identical in structure and respectively disposed between the toner outlets and the toner inlets of the common conveyance channel member, and a rotatable conveying member to transport the waste toner inside the common conveyance channel member linearly along a rotation axis thereof. The common conveyance channel member is shaped to equalize relative positions of each of the toner outlets and a corresponding one of the toner inlets of the common conveyance channel member among the multiple image forming units among which a distance from the toner outlet to the rotation axis differs.

Waste-toner conveyance device and image forming apparatus

A solid lubricant supply system includes a solid lubricant supplier to receive and supply solid lubricant to a solid lubricant supplying target. A pair of first and second moveable planar electrodes is opposed to each other. The second moveable planar electrode is partially moved toward the first moveable planar electrode as the solid lubricant is consumed. A residual solid lubricant quantity detecting unit is provide to detect a quantity of the residual solid lubricant at a first stage, in which the residual solid lubricant quantity is below a given level, by detecting electric conduction between the pair of first and second moveable planar electrodes when the pair of first and second moveable planar electrodes contacts each other. The first moveable planar electrode is enabled to further move together with the second moveable planar electrode when it is contacted and pressed by the second moveable planar electrode.

Lubricant supply system, image forming apparatus, and process cartridge

When the acute angle between a normal line, oriented outward from a blade abutting portion of a photosensitive member over which a cleaning blade remains abutted before separation of the surface of the photosensitive member from the cleaning blade, and a horizontal plane, passing through the origin of the normal line, is expressed as a positive value when the normal line lies above the horizontal plane and expressed as a negative value when the normal line lies below the horizontal plane; an imaging unit frame so supports a photosensitive module that the photosensitive member can rotate to a specific rotational position having a greater angle than the angle at the time of separation of the surface of the photosensitive member from the cleaning blade. Until the photosensitive member rotates from a normal rotational position to the specific rotational position, the photosensitive module cannot be removed from the imaging unit frame.

Image forming apparatus having replaceable modules

An image forming apparatus including an image bearing member, a charger, an irradiator, a developing device, a transfer device, a neutralizer, and a varying device is provided. The neutralizer is adapted to neutralize the image bearing member by emitting neutralization light thereto, after a toner image formed on the image bearing member is transferred therefrom. The varying device is adapted to vary an amount of the neutralization light to be emitted to the image bearing member by pulse-width modulation of a voltage to be supplied to the neutralizer. The image forming apparatus satisfies the following formula:&#x3e;5wherein f (Hz) represents a frequency of the pulse-width modulation and V (mm/s) represents a linear speed of the image bearing member.

Image forming apparatus with neutralizer and image forming method

A cleaning device to remove untransferred toner from a surface of an image carrier rotatable in a predetermined direction. The cleaning device includes a lubricant supply roller contacting the surface of the image carrier to supply a lubricant carried thereon to the surface of the image carrier, a first blade provided upstream from the lubricant supply roller in the direction of rotation of the image carrier, and a second blade provided downstream from the lubricant supply roller. The first blade contacts the surface of the image carrier to level the untransferred toner attaching to the surface of the image carrier to a thin layer. The second blade contacts the surface of the image carrier to level the lubricant supplied to the surface of the image carrier by the lubricant supply roller to a thin layer and to remove the untransferred toner from the surface of the image carrier.

Cleaning device, process cartridge, and image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes an image carrier, a cleaning device that collects a waste toner attached to the surface of the image carrier using a cleaning member, a waste container that is removable from an image forming apparatus body, a temporary storage unit that is provided in the image forming apparatus body to temporarily store a waste including the waste toner collected in the cleaning device before the waste is transported to the waste container, and a waste transport unit that transports the waste to the temporary storage unit, wherein a discharge speed of the waste from the temporary storage unit by the waste discharge unit is lower than a transport speed of the waste to the temporary storage unit by the waste transport unit.

Image forming apparatus

A lubricant supply device including a solid lubricant, a lubricant supply roller, a detector, and a varying device is provided. The lubricant supply roller is adapted to supply the lubricant to a toner image bearing member and is rotatable in a predetermined direction while slidably contacting both the solid lubricant and the toner image bearing member. The detector is adapted to detect an absolute humidity around the lubricant supply device. The varying device is adapted to vary an amount of the lubricant to be supplied to the toner image bearing member based on the absolute humidity detected by the detector.

Lubricant supply device, process cartridge, and image forming apparatus

A lubricant supplying device includes a lubricant supplying roller configured to rotate in a certain direction and makes a sliding contact with an image carrier on which a toner image is carried; a solid lubricant arranged to slide in contact with the lubricant supplying roller; a changing unit configured to change a revolution of the lubricant supplying roller to adjust an amount of the solid lubricant supplied onto the image carrier; and a calculation unit configured to obtain a product life or total consumption of the solid lubricant from a total running distance or total operating time of the image carrier or the lubricant supplying roller, the product life or the total consumption of the solid lubricant being corrected based on the amount of the solid lubricant supplied onto the image carrier.

Lubricant supplying device, process cartridge, and image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes an image carrier, a charging device to charge a surface of the image carrier, disposed across a predetermined gap from the image carrier, a latent image forming device, a developing device to develop a latent image formed on the image carrier into a toner image, a transfer unit to transfer the toner image from the image carrier onto a recording medium, a cleaning member to clean the image carrier after the toner image is transferred therefrom, a lubricant application member to lubricate the image carrier, a polarity adjustor to adjust polarities of the toner and lubricant adhering to the image carrier to be identical to a polarity of a charging bias. The polarity adjustor is disposed facing the image carrier, upstream from the charging device and downstream from the transfer unit in a direction in which the image carrier rotates.

A waste toner container that collects waste toner that is not used to form an image in an image forming unit of an image forming apparatus, and includes a waste toner collection opening to receive the waste toner output from the image forming unit, a toner amount detector to detect toner amount in the waste toner container, and a waste toner conveyance member disposed inside the waste toner container to convey the waste toner in the waste toner container. The waste toner conveyance member defines a waste toner conveyance direction exchange point, which is a boundary between two different toner conveyance direction regions in which the waste toner is conveyed in opposite directions, and the waste toner conveyance direction exchange point is disposed closer to the toner amount detector than is the waste toner collection opening.

Waste toner container and image forming apparatus incorporating same

A lubricant applicator rotatable at multiple different linear velocities, including a rotatable lubricant applying member to scrape a lubricant and to apply the lubricant to a surface of an image carrier rotatable at multiple different linear velocities. Any given linear velocity of the lubricant applying member satisfies a relation of n/N&#x3e;n/N&#x3e; . . . n/N, where N, N, . . . N(N&#x3c;N&#x3c; . . . N) are the multiple different linear velocities of the image carrier, and n, n, . . . nare multiple linear velocities of the lubricant applying member corresponding to the multiple linear velocities of the image carrier.

Lubricant applicator, image forming apparatus, and process cartridge

A cleaning unit, which can be incorporated in a process cartridge removably installable in an image forming apparatus, includes a lubricant applicator to apply lubricant to an image carrier, a first blade disposed upstream from the lubricant applicator in a direction of rotation of the image carrier with its distal end held in contact with the image carrier to remove residual toner remaining on the image carrier, a second blade disposed downstream from the lubricant applicator in the direction of rotation of the image carrier with its distal end held in contact with the image carrier to regulate the amount of lubricant applied to the image carrier, a temperature measuring member to measure a temperature of or near the second blade, a heater, and a temperature controller to control the heater to heat the second blade so that the measured temperature falls within a given set temperature range.

Cleaning unit, process cartridge incorporating same, and image forming apparatus incorporating the cleaning unit

An image forming apparatus includes first and second belt members, at least one color image carrier, a separate image carrier, a primary transfer member, a secondary transfer mechanism, a direct transfer member, a first image detector to detect positional deviation of transferred images from reference pattern images, and a controller to transfer the reference pattern images formed on the at least one color image carrier and the separate image carrier onto the first belt member or onto the second belt member, convey the reference pattern images to the first image detector, cause the first image detector to detect the reference pattern images, and adjust one or more image forming conditions of the image forming apparatus to prevent positional deviation of the transferred images from the reference pattern images based on detection results obtained by the first image detector.

Image forming apparatus utilizing both a transfer belt and a direct transfer member

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Tokyo, Japan

Shinichi Kawahara