Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Tadashi Onimura

Atsutoshi Ando

Koichi Suwa

Junichi Kato

Satoru Inami

Jun Suzuki

Kouichi Suwa

Hiroshi Sato

Seiji Yamaguchi

Masaki Ojima

Hideki Matsumoto

Kazushige Sakurai

Satoshi Sunahara

Keiji Okano

Takahiro Inoue

Kazumi Yamauchi

Hiroyasu Seita

An image forming apparatus includes a photosensitive member, a charging device for charging the photosensitive member, an exposing device for exposing a light including image information to the photosensitive member, and a developing device for supplying a toner to an electrostatic latent image formed on said photosensitive member. The developing means is held by a cartridge removably mountable on a main body of the image forming apparatus. The cartridge includes a memory for memorizing an amount of use of the cartridge, wherein a charging amount of the toner caused by friction in the cartridge when the amount of use of the cartridge is in an initial state is smaller than that when the amount of use of said cartridge is not in an initial state. A judging device compares the amount of use of the cartridge with a predetermined value showing a condition that the amount of use of the cartridge is in the initial state. A control device controls operating parameters relating to at least one of the charging device, the exposing device, and the developing device, in accordance with a compared result of the judging device, so as to prevent thinning of an image line width until the amount of use of the cartridge reaches the predetermined value. The control device changes the operating parameters until the amount of use of the cartridge reaches the predetermined value, and sets the operating parameters to be constant after the amount of use of the cartridge reaches the predetermined value.

Image forming apparatus with an amount of use control feature and cartridge removably mounted on the apparatus

A charging member includes an electroconductive base for being supplied with a voltage; a first resin layer; a second resin layer; wherein said first and second resin layers are produced by applying and drying paint-like material including resin material dispersed in aqueous material.

Charging member employing layers formed with aqueous resin

An image forming apparatus includes, an image bearing member, a charger which may be a main charger and auxiliary charger for charging the image bearing member, a developing unit for forming a toner image by developing an electrostatic latent image formed on the image bearing member using a toner having the same polarity as that of the charger, a transfer electrode, having a width different from that of the charger and contacting a transfer material, for applying a bias voltage having a polarity opposite to that of the charger to the transfer material, the cleaning blade contacting the image bearing member in a counter direction relative to a moving direction of the image bearing member in order to scrape and remove toner particles remaining on the image bearing member after the image transfer due to the potential of the image bearing member, and a member for reducing a charging potential difference between the charger and the transfer electrode generated on the image bearing member. A lubricant may be applied between the image bearing member and the cleaning blade member. By making the width of the charger and the width of the transfer electrode substantially the same, the charging potential difference between the charger and the transfer electrode generated on the image bearing member is reduced.

Image forming apparatus having a mechanism for preventing stripping off

An image forming apparatus includes a image bearing member having a photosensitive layer, a surface protection layer having fluorine resin material; a charging member contactable to the image bearing member to electrically charge the image bearing member, the charging member is capable of being supplied with an oscillation voltage, and wherein a peak-to-peak voltage of the oscillating voltage applied across a gap between a surface of the charging member and the surface of the image bearing member, is not less than twice a charge starting voltage of the image bearing member in the gap and not more than 1600 volt.

Image forming apparatus comprising contact type charging member

A cleaning device for an electrophotographic apparatus including an image carrier has a cleaning blade with an edge slidably contracting with an image carrier to remove foreign matter remaining on a surface of the image carrier. A lubricant including indefinite-form lubricant particles is applied to zones on the edges of the cleaning blade near both longitudinal ends of the cleaning blade and a lubricant including spherical lubricant particles is applied to a zone on the edge of the cleaning blade between the zones to which the lubricant including indefinite-form lubricant particles has been applied. A process cartridge includes the cleaning device, and an image forming apparatus incorporates the process cartridge.

Cleaning blade for use in electrophotography, process cartridge and

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Toride, Japan

Tadashi Onimura