Mita Industrial Co., Ltd.

Yasuhiro Matsuo

Shingo Mori

Hiromi Sakata

Masahiro Higashitani

Yasuyuki Hirai

Kuniaki Nakano

Yasuyuki Ishiguro

Masahiro Sako

Minoru Kishigami

Hidehiro Tabuchi

Yoshinobu Takemura

Toshinori Nishimura

Shigeo Kurando

Yoshihisa Tanaka

Hiroyuki Tsuji

Tsugio Nakanishi

Tadashi Fujioka

Hisahiro Kato

Kunio Nakai

Kazuhiro Morimoto

Kouji Ujino

Mitsuru Adachi

An opening for discharging toner is formed in a lower part of a cartridge body containing toner. A shutter mounting body is mounted on the opening. A first shutter is slidably mounted on the shutter mounting body. A second shutter is slidably mounted on the first shutter. A front end of a sealing member for sealing the opening is extended, the extended front end being inserted through a seal traction opening formed in a front end of the second shutter, and fixed to a front end of the first shutter. When the second shutter is pulled out of the shutter mounting body, the sealing member is towed by the seal traction opening. In addition, the first shutter is further towed by the sealing member, to be also pulled out. Consequently, nearly half of the sealing member from its front end is stripped. When the second shutter is further pulled out after the movement of the first shutter is regulated, the seal traction opening in the second shutter tows the sealing member while allowing the insertion of the sealing member. At this time, the sealing member is stripped while being so folded that a toner adhering surface is located in its inside. In this construction, the stroke for stripping is decreased, thereby to make it possible to prevent contamination by toner as well as prevent a large part of the sealing member from being ineffective.

Method of stripping a sealing member from a toner cartridge

It is a major object of the present invention to break down and level a heap-up of toner built in the hopper through dropping from the cartridge when feeding toner into the hopper and to prevent toner from leakage from the cartridge due to erroneous operation with a remarkably simple and cheap construction. Namely, the leveling member moves a plurality of number of times in line with engaging and disengaging operation of the cartridge for the hopper and opening and closing operation of the cartridge in the same direction of the shutter, thereby causing a heap-up of toner built in the hopper housing of the hopper to be effectively broken down and leveled. Furthermore, only when the shutter is in its closed status for the cartridge, the cartridge can be removed from the opening of the hopper.

Toner feeding device

Toner cartridge having opening for discharging toner sealed with sealing

A toner recovery roller having at least its outer peripheral part made of an insulator and rotated and driven in a predetermined direction is disposed in the vicinity of a position where an image carrier and a developing roller interact with each other, and a triboelectric charging member for triboelectrically charging an outer peripheral surface of the toner recovery roller to a polarity opposite to that of toner particles is so provided as to be brought into contact with the outer peripheral surface of the toner recovery roller.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus which facilitates the input and output of copy paper. One embodiment includes an image forming apparatus with paper supply trays, a development area, a console and a sorter. By pressing a transparent paper mode key on the console, normal and projector paper are sequentially fed from the trays to the development area and then to the sorter. The sorter is set in one of three modes by a sorter instructor. A manual key on the console allows an operator to set the instructor to position the sorter in any one of the three modes. The pressing of the transparent paper mode key or the detection by a detector of transparent paper in the feeding tray results in the instructor setting the sorter in a non-sort mode despite the sort instructor having been previously set in a different mode. Also, another embodiment of the invention includes a judging device for judging whether a cover copy mode or a page numbering mode has been inputted to the copying assembly and, if so, then the sorter instructor sets the sorter in a sort mode. Another embodiment uses a selecting device to match the detected size and orientation of the transparent paper with a similar detected size in one of a plurality of cassettes containing non-transparent paper. An additional embodiment features rear and face discharging modes which, when set, result in a predetermined positioning and sequencing of the transparent projector and normal paper.

Image forming apparatus having means for coordinating the input and

When documents fed by an automatic document feeder are subjected to the first copying operation, the documents are counted one by one. Alternately, the total number of documents are calculated by dividing the number of copy paper sheets sent to an intermediate tray, by the preset number of copies. Page entry is made in the copy paper sheets taken out from the intermediate tray, based on the total number of documents thus obtained. The total number of documents may be automatically counted. Accordingly, even though the documents are successively fed, starting from the last-page document, page entry may be made. The operator is not required to manually count the total number of documents.

Page entering apparatus for electrophotographic copying machine

Growing community of inventors

Osaka, Japan

Yasuhiro Matsuo