Mita Industrial Co., Ltd.

Tetsuya Nakano

Yoshitake Shimizu

Masahide Inoue

Koichi Tsuyama

Naruo Yabe

Teruaki Teratani

Seijiro Ishimaru

Mitsushi Kuroki

Nobuyasu Honda

Toshimitsu Ikeda

Mikiko Tamori

Kouichi Tsuyama

Seijirou Ishimaru

The developer in accordance with the present invention includes toner, and a carrier having a core material the surface of which is coated with a coating layer made of a polymer, the coating layer having a resistance value sufficient to minimize the counter electric charge remaining in the coating layer, and the toner having any of characteristic values required for preventing a counter electric charge remaining in the coating layer from being increased. The use of the developer of the present invention not only prevents the occurrence of so-called carrier scattering, to thereby prevent blanking, but also produces an image of high quality having a high initial image density.

Two-component developer

A two-component developer comprising a magnetic carrier having a carbon black-containing resin-coating layer and a toner composed of a carbon black-containing resin composition is disclosed. A styrene resin, an acrylic resin or a styrene-acrylic copolymer resin is selected as each of the carrier-coating resin and the toner-forming resin, and the carbon black content A in the carrier-coating layer and the carbon black content B in the toner-forming layer satisfy requirements represented by the following formulae: ##STR1## Namely, by adjusting the carbon black contents A and B within specific ranges relatively to each other, a two-component developer which is well-balanced between the frictional chargeability characteristic and the electric resistance is provided.

A toner composition comprising a binder resin having dispersed therein additives including a colorant and a charge control agent, wherein said additives are present as agglomerates having an average sectional area of from 1.4 to 1.7 .mu.m.sup.2 in a section of toner particles, the total sectional area of the agglomerates in the section of toner particles ranging from 1.5 to 1.8%, or wherein said colorant and charge control agent are present as agglomerates having an average sectional area of from 1.4 to 1.7 .mu.m.sup.2 in a section of toner particles, and said composition has such rheological characteristics that a dissipation factor (tan .delta.) is from 0.95 to 1.25 when a storage elastic modulus (G') is 10.sup.4 dyne/cm.sup.2.

Toner composition

The present invention provides a start developer wherein an output voltage of a sensor in the start developer having a particular toner density is not less than 0.9 times an output voltage of the sensor in a developer having the same toner density in a time period during which image characteristics are stabilized after repeating image formation by an image forming apparatus and is less than a threshold value at which the supply of toner is started and a method of controlling the toner density using the start developer. According to the present invention, good images can be always formed irrespective of the variation in characteristics between sensors in image forming apparatuses and from the early stage of image formation to the stable time period.

Start developer and method of controlling toner density

In an electrophotographic toner, by using as the binder resin a styrene/acrylic resin in which in the gel permeation chromatogram, a high molecular weight peak value appears in a molecular weight region higher than 1.times.10.sup.5, a low molecular weight peak value appears in a molecular weight region of from 2.times.10.sup.4 to 500, a minimum value appears halfways between the two peaks and the ratio (V/P) of the area of the valley to the peak area is lower than 0.3, the internal cohesive force of the binder resin for the toner can be prominently improved while maintaining the low-temperature fixing property and offset resistance at high levels, and pulverization of the toner and formation of the spent toner can be prevented during the developing operation and the durability of the toner can be improved.

Electrophotographic toner

The present invention provides an electrophotographic developer comprising (i) a toner containing a fixing resin in which the content of an acrylic component is limited to a predetermined range, or a toner of which surface dye density is limited to a predetermined range, and (ii) a carrier coated with a coating resin containing, as an acrylic component, dodecyl methacrylate or 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate. In the electrophotographic developer of the present invention, the electric charging characteristics are always stable.

Electrophotographic developer comprising resin coated carrier

The present invention provides an electrophotographic developer comprising (i) a toner containing, as a fixing resin, a styrene-acrylic copolymer presenting a gel permeation chromatogram showing a molecular-weight distribution in which the detection-starting molecular weight and the detection-ending molecular weight are respectively located in specific ranges, and (ii) a carrier coated with a coating resin which is a styrene-acrylic copolymer containing at least 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate. Even though repeatedly agitated in the developing device, the electrophotographic developer of the present invention is not deteriorated and assures good durability and long life-time.

Electrophotographic developer

A start developer is described which includes a toner and a carrier, present in a predetermined ratio. The carrier spent amount is adjusted so that it is not less than 0.010% in terms of the amount of carbon, as measured with a carbon analyzer. With this start developer, good quality images may be formed throughout the copying operation, from the initial image forming stage to the repeated image forming stage and through the stabilized image forming stage.

Start developer

Disclosed is a toner for developing a statically charged image, which comprises a fixing resin and, dispersed therein, a colorant and a charge-controlling dye. This toner is characterized in that the tangent (tan .delta.) of the loss angle is in the range of from 0.95 to 1.25 when the storage modulus of elasticity (G') is 10.sup.4 dyne/cm.sup.2. The toner having such rheological characteristics has an excellent fixing property, a high offset resistance, a capacity of forming an image having a high quality and a good durability.

Toner for developing statically charged images and process for

Disclosed are a toner for developing a statically charged image and a process for the preparation thereof. If a toner for developing a statically charged image, comprising a binder resin and, dispersed therein, a colorant and a charge-controlling dye, is prepared so that it has a particle size distribution satisfying the requirement represented by the following formula:

In forming an image by developing an electrostatic latent image with a grey toner, a mixture of a white toner and a black toner is used as the grey toner and the ratio (D) of the black toner to the entire toner, the developing voltage (DV) and the image density (ID) are set so that the requirement represented by the following formula is satisfied:

Electrophotographic image-forming process using grey toner

Disclosed is a method of developing an electrostatic image by bringing an electrostatic image-carrying surface of a substrate into sliding contact with a magnetic brush of a developer formed on a developer-feeding sleeve having a magnet arranged in the interior thereof, wherein the magnetic brush is formed from an earing-promoting component comprising particles of a dispersion of a powder of a magnetic material in a resin, which have a relatively large diameter of 70 to 300 microns, and a developer component comprising particles of a dispersion of a powder of a magnetic material in a binder medium, which have a relatively small diameter of 5 to 50 microns.

Method of developing electrostatic image with magnetic brush ear promoter

Disclosed is a dry developer for an electrostatic image, which comprises molded particles of a dispersion of a binder medium, a wax and a pigment, wherein a combination or partial reaction product of (A) a copolymer of an olefin with a polar group-containing, ethylenically unsaturated monomer and (B) a metal alkoxide of aluminum or titanium is incorporated as a crosslinking agent into said molded particles. In this dry developer, the mutual dispersibility of the respective developer components is highly improved, and the developer particles are uniform and homogeneous in the composition. This dry developer for an electrostatic image is prepared by a process which comprises kneading a mixture of a binder resin, a wax and a pigment at a temperature higher than the softening points of the binder resin and wax and molding the kneaded composition into fine particles, wherein prior to, simultaneously with or after addition of the pigment, a combination or partial reaction product of (A) a copolymer of an olefin with a polar group-containing, ethylenically unsaturated monomer and (B) a metal alkoxide of aluminum or titanium is incorporated into the binder resin and wax and the composition is reacted in the molten state.

Growing community of inventors

Nabari, Japan

Tetsuya Nakano