Brother Kogyo Kabushiki-kaisha

Tetsuya Kitamura

Shigeru Kagayama

Tomoaki Hattori

Yoshiyasu Honma

Masaki Takatsugi

Sangyoji Kazuo

The coat liquid is applied all over the under surface of the insulation sheet . At this time, the coat liquid is also applied into the apertures . Excessive coat liquid is absorbed by the absorption sheet places over the upper surface of the insulation sheet . As a result, the preferable amount of the coat liquid is coated over the under surface and the aperture side walls defining the apertures . When the coat liquid is dried and hardened the slide facilitating layer and the charge prevention layer are formed on the under surface and the aperture side walls

Method for producing aperture electrode member

A film,is adhered using an adhesive layer,to the lower surface of an insulation sheet,that contacts the peripheral surface of atoner bearing roller. Apertures,are formed through the insulation sheet,, the adhesive layer,and the film,. An indentation portion,is formed around each aperture,in an upper surface,of the insulation sheet,. Because the insulation sheet,and the film,are not attached into an integral unit using baking, the resultant member will not warp by differences in thermal expansion of the insulation sheet,and the film,, as would occur if the two were baked together. Because the film,is extremely hard and smooth, toner will not pierce into the film

Recording head for forming images with charged particles

An aperture electrode assembly having an insulating sheet, made of polyimide, in which a plurality of apertures having a diameter of 80 &mgr;m are formed in a line. A control electrode, made of copper leaf having a thickness of 8 &mgr;m, surrounds each of the apertures on the insulating sheet. A coating layer containing carbon particles as a conductive material is formed so as to cover both the control electrodes and the surface of the insulating sheet. As the material of the coating layer, the coating liquid is prepared by mixing the carbon particles in an insulating binder made of an organic synthetic resin, preferably, of polyimide resin. The coating liquid is applied onto the insulating sheet and the control electrodes, and baked at a temperature lower than 300&deg; C., preferably between 200&deg; C. and 280&deg; C., for several minutes. A back coating layer is provided to the back surface of the insulating sheet. The back coating layer is formed by baking the coating liquid layer at a temperature of 450&deg; C. separately from the insulating sheet and, then, the baked coating layer is adhered to the back surface of the insulating sheet using an adhesive.

Electrode assembly, and method for producing, used in recording process

To provide a recording apparatus that is capable of recording high quality images free from density unevenness, a recording electrode used in the recording apparatus is formed from an electrically insulating base film formed with a plurality of apertures, and control electrodes formed on the front surface of the base film to surround each of the plurality of apertures. To obtain the base film which is not likely to be scratched or wrinkled, a product of the modulus of elasticity of the base film and the thickness thereof to the third power needs to be more than 0.008 kg.multidot.mm.

Recording electrode with improved base film for high quality image

An aperture electrode member includes an insulating sheet having a plurality of apertures formed in a row therein, and a control electrode formed on the insulating sheet on the upper side of each of the apertures. On the face of the insulating sheet opposite to the face on which the apertures are formed, a coating layer serving as an oxide fine particle layer is formed at portions of insulating sheet at which the insulating sheet contacts with toner particle carried on the toner carrying roller. A coating layer can be formed by dispersing carbon serving as an antistatic agent and oxide fine particle silica serving as a fluidity increasing agent into a binder, applying the mixture to the insulating sheet to form a film and baking to harden it.

Image forming apparatus

When a toner image formed on the belt is transported to the transport path of the image recording medium, the image recording medium is caused to abut the belt by the rollers and so that the toner image on the belt is transferred to the image recording medium. Also, the belt heated by the heat roller heats the image recording medium and thermally fixes the toner image to the image recording medium. Thus, thermal fixation is simultaneously achieved with transfer of the image to the image recording medium.

Image forming device with aperture electrode body

An image forming apparatus has an aperture electrode member formed of a polyimide insulating sheet of preferably 25 .mu.m thickness, control electrodes of preferably 1 .mu.m thickness formed on the upper surface of the insulating sheet, and five apertures each of which has an aperture diameter of preferably 40 .mu.m formed in each control electrode. The apertures are designed to penetrate through the aperture electrode. By providing a plurality of small apertures, the toner can be highly controlled with low voltage. Therefore, an image can be formed with high image quality and at a high speed.

Image forming apparatus with an electrode unit having plural electrodes

An image recording apparatus having aperture electrode body formed with a plurality of apertures through which toners pass to deposit onto an image receiving member. The aperture electrode body includes an insulative substrate having the apertures and control electrodes formed over the insulative substrate and each surrounding each aperture. The aperture electrode body has a nature of bending due to difference in thermal expansion coefficient of the insulative substrate and the control electrodes. To provide uniform bending, dummy electrodes are formed over the insulative substrate. The dummy electrodes includes a first set of dummy electrodes positioned at upstream side of the control electrodes with respect to a running direction of the image receiving member. The dummy electrode also includes a second set of dummy electrodes positioned beside the extreme end of the control electrode in the array direction of the apertures.

Image recording apparatus having aperture electrode with dummy

An insulating layer of an aperture electrode provided in a recording apparatus is formed of polyimide which is liable to be negatively electrified through frictional contact with toner when the toner is negatively chargeable. Further, a charge member which can be charged in the same polarity as the toner is placed on the aperture electrode so as to surround the opening portions of the aperture electrode. With this structure, a recording operation of high image quality can be performed using a low voltage while preventing the deposition of the toner at the control electrodes of the aperture electrode so that the recording operation can be stably performed at all times.

Aperture electrode with overlying charge member

An image recording apparatus having an aperture electrode and an electrically conductive opposing electrode. The aperture electrode selectively allows toners to pass. A sheet is backed by the opposing electrode, and the toner passing through the aperture electrode is attracted onto the sheet. A gap is provided between the aperture electrode and the opposing electrode by using a pair of spacers. The gap distance is greater than a minimum level to avoid puncture. The spacers are mounted on non aperture portions of the aperture electrode for supporting axially end portions of the opposing electrode or are mounted on the opposing electrode.

Image recording apparatus having spacer between aperture electrode and

The pulse width modulation circuit in the image forming apparatus of the invention comprises a discriminate circuit, an on-time control circuit, and an amplification circuit. The discriminate circuit determines whether an imaging potential or a non-imaging potential is applied to adjoining control electrodes. The on-time control circuit controls an applying time of the imaging potential to the control electrodes according to a result determined by the discriminate circuit, that is, according to the kind of potential applied to adjoining control electrodes. The amplification circuit amplifies the output from the on-time control circuit to a suitable control voltage which is sent to the control electrode. Therefore, it is possible to pass a predetermined amount of the toner particles through the desired aperture, even if the voltage applied by each control electrode is different. Moreover, a shield electrode may further be provided between the aperture electrodes of the present image forming apparatus to prevent an electric field from being generated between each control electrode.

Image forming apparatus having an aperture electrode with controlled

In an image recording apparatus for recording an image on an image recording medium, a particle controller having at least one aperture receives electrically charged particles and selectively allows the electrically charged particles to pass through the aperture. A back electrode is positioned to confront the particle controller, with a space being formed between the back electrode and the particle controller for enabling passage of an image recording medium. The back electrode electrostatically attracts the electrically charged particles having passed through the aperture of the particle controller in a direction toward the back electrode so that the electrically charged particles may be attached to the image recording medium positioned in the space. The particle controller is vibrated with a vibration acceleration having a value equal to or larger than 500 G.

Image recording apparatus with a vibrating particle controller

The present invention relates to an image recording apparatus which directly controls a flow of charged toner particles by a toner particle control electrode and records an image on an image recording medium. The image recording apparatus has a toner particle supply portion for supplying toner particles charged with a first polarity and a toner particle control electrode for controlling the toner particles supplied by the toner particle supply portion according to an image to be recorded. An intermediate recording medium attracts toner particles controlled by the toner particle control portion and a toner image is formed on the intermediate medium. A transferring station transfers the toner image formed on the intermediate recording medium to an image recording medium. A thermal fixing station fixes the toner image which is transferred to the image recording medium by the transferring station, on the image recording medium. Transfer and fixing of the toner image to the image recording medium may occur by use of a heated pressing roll. Images can be recorded on relatively thick recording media by this apparatus.

Image recording apparatus having toner particle control member

In an aperture electrode and a method for manufacturing the same, two metal layers are formed on both surfaces of a thin ceramic insulating substrate by a thin film forming process such as sputtering, and then plural control electrodes are formed on one surface of the substrate by patterning the metal layer on the surface with photoetching, thereby forming a basic body of the aperture electrode. Thereafter, an aperture for passing toners therethrough is formed substantially at the center of each control electrode by drilling the basic body or irradiating laser beam of an excimer laser source to the basic body.

Method for manufacturing aperture electrode for controlling toner supply

The image recording apparatus of the invention generates an electric field between a particle control electrode, which has apertures, and an electrode roller to directly control the flow of toner particles to record an image on an image recording medium which passes between the electrode and the roller. While the image is recorded, a piezoelectric member mounted on the particle control electrode causes the particle control electrode to vibrate using variable oscillation frequency which will coincide, at least at one time, with the resonance frequency of the particle control electrode. The oscillation frequency is applied from a variable frequency oscillator to the piezoelectric member so that the control electrode is vibrated at a large amplitude. As a result, the toner particles do not adhere to the apertures and the apertures do not become clogged with the toner particles. A high-quality output image will thus be obtained.

Growing community of inventors

Gifu, Japan

Tetsuya Kitamura