Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Sho Tsuritani

Tomohiro Kubota

Naoki Nakatake

Yoshiyuki Shimizu

Emi Kita

Masato Tsuji

Manabu Hamada

Atsushi Takehara

Tomofumi Yoshida

Powder container

An image forming apparatus, including an image developer to develop an electrostatic latent image and a toner provider to provide a toner from a toner container to the image developer in a direction of gravitational force. The toner container is capable of taking a first position of directing a toner outlet in a horizontal direction; a second position of directing the toner outlet in a direction of gravitational force; and a position of being removed, directing the toner outlet upward relative to the horizontal direction when further rotating from the first position. The toner container includes a main cap member to close the toner outlet when taking the first position and the position of being removed; and a sub-cap member to cover the main cap member while the toner container is displaced from the first position to the position of being removed.

Image forming apparatus using a toner container in which the toner outlet may be positioned in a horizontal or vertical direction

A toner supply method includes detecting whether a remaining toner amount in the development device is equal to or greater than a first remaining amount, supplying a first supply amount of toner to the development device in a first supply mode when the remaining toner amount is not greater than the first remaining amount, detecting whether the remaining toner amount in the development device is equal to or greater than a second remaining amount smaller than the first remaining amount, and supplying a second supply amount, smaller than the first supply amount, of toner to the development device in a second supply mode when the remaining toner amount is reduced to or below the second remaining amount.

Toner supply method, development device, process unit, and image forming apparatus

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Ohta-ku, Japan

Sho Tsuritani