Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Toshiaki Fujisawa

Hitoshi Nagahama

Mitsuhiro Murata

Kenichi Nagata

Motoyuki Itoyama

Syouichi Fujita

Shigeyuki Wakada

Masaya Fujitani

Takahiro Bitoh

A toner cartridge for an image forming apparatus includes: a toner container; a toner feed port for supplying toner to a developing device; a toner feeding blade structure for feeding the toner from the toner container to the developing device; and a recording chip for recording history information on the toner container. The toner container includes a toner feed motor for rotationally driving the toner feeding blade structure. The recording chip includes a supplied toner quantity totalizer for summing the amounts of toner supplied and a residual toner quantity display controller for displaying the residual toner quantity in the toner container on a display portion of the image forming apparatus.

Toner cartridge and control method of displaying the residual toner quantity in the same toner cartridge

There is provided an image stabilizing apparatus which is capable of keeping a toner concentration and a printing density constant when toner consumption is small, and further which is systematically simple. The image stabilizing apparatus comprises a control portion for controlling a toner replenishment amount in a toner replenishing apparatus depending on a toner concentration detected by a toner concentration sensor and a print coverage of a document detected by a print coverage detecting portion, and controlling, when the print coverage of the document detected by the print coverage detecting portion is less than a predetermined value and such documents continue, so as to discharge a predetermined amount of toner to the image bearing member by developing forcibly, and then replenish the same amount of toner as the predetermined amount by the toner replenishing apparatus.

Image stabilizing apparatus and image forming apparatus

In a full-color image forming apparatus including a light source for monochrome image formation that outputs light corresponding to monochrome image information and exposes a monochrome image forming photoreceptor and light sources for color image formation that output lights corresponding to color image information and expose photoreceptors for forming images of colors other than black, when the light source for monochrome image formation and the light sources for color image formation are caused to output the lights and a full-color image is formed, an optical output of the light source for monochrome image formation is set to become equal to or less than optical outputs of the light sources for color image formation, preferably, become less than the optical outputs of the light sources for color image formation.

Full-color image forming apparatus having variable power light source

A color image forming apparatus includes: a multiple number of process printing units, each having a photoreceptor drum for forming a toner image with a toner corresponding to color-separated image information for each color and a developing unit for supplying the toner to the surface of the photoreceptor drum, wherein the toner images formed by electrophtography on the surfaces of the photoreceptor drums are transferred to a recording medium by the function of a transfer electric field, and is characterized in that the toners to be supplied to the photoreceptor drums from the developing units for every color are specified so that the time constants &#x3c4; of the toners become greater as the position of toner supply is located more upstream in the development process.

Growing community of inventors

Yamatokoriyama, Japan

Toshiaki Fujisawa