Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Yoichi Sakurai

Daisuke Ito

Tadashi Kasai

Masakazu Terao

Akira Yoshida

Masaki Watanabe

Shinya Kobayashi

Yoshihiro Sonohara

Keiko Matsumoto

Daisuke Takahashi

Tatsuya Niimi

Akio Kosuge

Ken Yoshida

Yuuichiroh Uematsu

Natsumi Matsue

Hiroaki Suzuki

Kayoko Tanaka

Yoichi Ito

Kohta Fujimori

Makoto Yasuda

Takuya Saito

Masato Iio

Teruki Kusahara

Tomohide Takenaka

Yuichi Aizawa

Masahiro Katoh

Kohichiroh Tanaka

Masanori Kurosawa

Tomomi Akieda

Tsuyoshi Arao

Tadeshi Kasai

A droplet discharge apparatus includes a discharge head including a nozzle, a nozzle surface observation device, and processing circuitry. The discharge head including the nozzle is configured to discharge a droplet onto a discharge receiving medium formed of powder. The nozzle surface observation device is configured to observe a nozzle surface of the nozzle of the discharge head. The processing circuitry is configured to calculate an adhesion amount of attached matter to the nozzle surface based on an observation result of the nozzle surface observation device. The processing circuitry is configured to determine, based on a calculation result of the adhesion amount of the attached matter, an operation on a control target that controls at least one of a mass and a discharge speed of the droplet.

Droplet discharge apparatus, droplet discharge method, and non-transitory storage medium

Provided is a material set for forming a three-dimensional object, the material set including: a first liquid material for forming a three-dimensional object; and a second liquid material for forming a three-dimensional object, wherein the first liquid material contains a solvent, an organic compound A, and inorganic particles, and wherein the second liquid material contains an organic compound B having reactivity with the organic compound A.

Material set for forming three-dimensional object, three-dimensional object producing method, and three-dimensional object producing apparatus

A solid freeform fabrication material set includes a material A for solid freeform fabrication and a material B for solid freedom fabrication. The material A includes a polymerization initiator A and at least one of an organic particle and an inorganic particle. The material B includes a polymerizable compound B.

Solid freeform fabrication material set, method of fabricating solid freeform object, method of fabricating dental prosthesis, and device for fabricating solid freeform object

An image forming apparatus includes a rotatable image bearer, a toner image forming device, an image reader, and a control unit. The toner image forming device forms a test toner image on the image bearer. The image reader reads the test toner image and a predetermined reference member. The control unit calculates an amount of toner contained in the test toner image based on image data from the test toner image. Based on image data from the reference member, the control unit selects a position of a pixel to be used for calculation of the amount of toner contained in the test toner image from pixels included in the image data from the reference member, to calculate the amount of toner contained in the test toner image from data of a pixel located at the position thus selected among pixels included in the image data from the test toner image.

Image forming apparatus incorporating image reader

An image forming apparatus includes an image bearer, an image forming device to form a toner image on the image bearer, a transfer device to transfer the toner image to a recording medium, a line sensor as an image density sensor to detect image density of the toner image, and a controller operatively connected to the image density sensor. The image density sensor is disposed so as to be shorter in a rotational direction of the image bearer than in a width direction of the image bearer perpendicular to the rotational direction of the image bearer. The controller forms a shading pattern image including a plurality of patches on the image bearer, and detects image density of the plurality of patches, so as to control image density. The shading pattern image is shorter in the rotational direction of the image bearer than in the width direction of the image bearer.

Image forming apparatus incorporating line sensor

An image forming apparatus includes at least one image bearer; multiple developing devices to develop the latent images with developers including toner and carrier into a toner image; multiple developer supply devices to supply the developers to the multiple developing devices, respectively; and a fixing device to fix the toner image on a sheet of recording media. When one of the multiple developing devices positioned at a shortest distance from an outline of the fixing device is referred to as a first developing device, and one of the multiple developer supply devices that supplies developer to the first developing device is referred to as a first developer supply device, the first developer supply device is greater in percentage by weight of carrier in developer supplied to the first developing device than rest of the multiple developer supply devices.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes an image carrier, a transfer unit, and a control unit. The image carrier has a surface to bear a toner image thereon. The transfer unit has a transfer member to transfer the toner image onto a recording sheet conveyed in a conveyance direction for trailing-end borderless image formation and duplex image formation. The transfer unit is configured to form the toner image on the recording sheet without forming a margin at a trailing end of the recording sheet in the conveyance sheet in the trailing-end borderless image formation. The transfer unit is configured to form the toner image on front and back faces of the recording sheet in the duplex image formation. When a width of the toner image formed in a borderless image area of the recording sheet in the trailing-end borderless image formation is smaller in a direction perpendicular to the conveyance direction than a threshold value, the control unit permits the duplex image formation. When the width is the threshold value or greater, the control unit prohibits the duplex image formation.

In an image forming apparatus, multiple toners are superimposed, formed and layered, on a recording medium and a toner image is made. The toner that superimposed lastly on the recording medium, that is, a top layer of toner, has a toner fixing characteristic value that causes the top layer of toner to be fixed on the recording medium by lower temperature than one or all of the other multiple toners. This provides for a better fixing quality.

Image forming apparatus and method capable of improving fixing quality

An inverse image data generating unit that generates inverse image data that indicates a transparent developer amount that indicates an amount of a transparent developer, and a region where the transparent developer amount is used, based on a color plane image data that indicates a color developer amount that indicates an amount of a color developer, and a region where the color developer amount is used; a conversion unit that converts the transparent developer amount of the inverse image data into a transparent developer amount larger than the transparent developer amount by referring to a conversion table; and a transparent developer plane image data generating unit that generates transparent developer plane image data used in image formation of a transparent developer in an image forming apparatus based on the inverse image data indicating a transparent developer amount after the conversion.

Print control device and print control method

An image forming apparatus and method that compute a total amount of toner to be deposited per unit area of a target image in which a first unit area is computed to form a first toner image using a highest total amount of toner, and a second unit area is computed to form a second toner image using a lowest total amount of toner. When the highest total amount of toner computed by a computing unit exceeds a given level, a transfer bias determination unit identifies a transfer bias to transfer a toner image of the target image from an overlapping portion that can effectively transfer the first toner image, and the second toner image.

Image forming apparatus, image forming method, and image forming program

An image glossing apparatus including a recording sheet feeder feeding a recording sheet bearing a toner image; a glossing device including a heater heating a glossing portion of the toner image to gloss the portion; a glossiness information obtaining device obtaining position information on the position of the glossing portion; and a position detector including a tip detector detecting tip of the fed recording sheet, and a distance measuring device measuring the moving distance of the recording sheet after the tip of the recording sheet is detected. The position detector detects the position of a portion of the recording sheet facing the heater based on the information on the tip of the recording sheet and the information on the moving distance of the recording sheet. When the portion of the recording sheet facing the heater is the glossing portion, the heater heats the portion to gloss the glossing portion.

Image glossing apparatus, image glossing method, and recording medium storing image glossing program

An image forming apparatus and method compute a total amount of toner to be deposited per unit area of a target image. When the highest total amount of toner computed exceeds a given level, a heating determination unit, using a processor, determines whether a first heating amount range enabling fusing of the computed highest total amount of toner and a second heating amount range enabling fusing of the computed lowest total amount of toner have an overlapping portion that can effectively fuse a first toner image, a second toner image, and identifies a heating amount to fuse a toner image of the target image from an overlapping portion that can effectively fuse the first toner image, and the second toner image.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Yoichi Sakurai