Konica Minolta, Inc.

Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc.

Tsutomu Sakamaki

Takashi Yamada

Masanori Murakami

Toru Komatsu

Masashi Saito

Taizou Oonishi

Kazunori Nishinoue

Naohiko Hanyu

Yu Harashima

An image forming apparatus including: an image former that forms an image on a recording material; includes a fixer that has a first fixing member having an elastic layer, a second fixing member that forms a fixing nip with the first fixing member, and an external heater that heats the first fixing member from outside, and fixes the image on the recording material by heating and pressing the conveyed recording material at the fixing nip; and a hardware processor that executes a thermal expansion mode, in which in the thermal expansion mode, the hardware processor causes the external heater to heat the first fixing member to a temperature higher than a temperature during normal printing.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus which can accurately predict occurrence of damage to a fixing rotary member due to passage of a recording material and prevent consequential deterioration of a formed image. The image forming apparatus includes: a pair of fixing rotary members constituting a nip part for nipping a recording material on which a toner image is formed; a surface homogenizing member for homogenizing the surface of the fixing rotary member; a hardware processor that acquires physical property information of the recording material; and a controller for controlling drive of the surface homogenizing member according to the physical property information of the recording material acquired by the hardware processor that acquires the physical property information.

Image forming apparatus and method for controlling the image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes: a transfer unit configured to transfer a toner image to a recording medium at a transfer nip; a fuser unit configured to heat and pressurize at a fuser nip the recording medium to which the toner image has been transferred by the transfer unit, to fuse the toner image to the recording medium; and a pressing unit configured to press both edge portions of the recording medium in a width direction between the transfer nip and the fuser nip so that a central portion of the recording medium in the width direction becomes lower than the both edge portions of the recording medium in the width direction.

Image forming apparatus and feed control method

Disclosed herein are a fixing device and an image forming apparatus including: a rotatable fixing side member; a rear side member that rotates in pressure contact with an outer peripheral surface of the fixing side member, the rear side member forming a fixing nip portion for conveying a sheet on which a toner image is formed in a sandwiching manner in conjunction with the fixing side member; and velocity difference setting structure for setting a velocity difference between a surface velocity of the rear side member and a surface velocity of the fixing side member, wherein the rear side member and the fixing side member rotate with a velocity difference set by the velocity difference setting structure.

Fixing device and image forming apparatus with velocity difference setting means

Disclosed herein is a fixing device including: a fixing nip width changing section configured to change a fixing nip width of a fixing nip; and a control section configured to control the fixing nip width changing section such that the fixing nip width is smaller than a fixing nip width for use in a fixation, and to rotate a fixing side member and a back side supporting member at different circumferential speeds so as to restore a surface of the fixing side member, wherein the control section controls the fixing nip width such that a circumferential speed difference between the fixing side member and the back side supporting member is equal to a predetermined circumferential speed difference.

Fixing device, image forming apparatus and surface restoration method

An image forming apparatus is provided that includes: a heating member that heats a recording sheet; a pressure member that presses the recording sheet between the heating member and the pressure member; an adjustment mechanism that causes the heating member and the pressure member to contact or to separate; and a control section that, at a time of a warm-up operation or an idling operation, based on a predetermined condition, controls the adjustment mechanism so as to cause the heating member and the pressure member to contact at a contact pressure that is lower than a contact pressure between the heating member and the pressure member at a time of image formation or is approximately identical to the contact pressure at a time of image formation.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Tsutomu Sakamaki