Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Yoshihisa Hara

Daisuke Inoue

Masami Okamoto

Takahiro Honda

Kaori Hemmi

Satoshi Kai

Eiri Sagae

Kenta Kashiwagi

Kazuhiro Kotaka

Yuusuke Arai

An image forming apparatus including a developing device and a fixing device is provided. The fixing device includes a fixing rotator having a fixing surface, an opposing rotator opposing the fixing rotator to form a nip portion therebetween, and a fixing surface reformer having an abutting layer to abut the fixing surface. The abutting layer contains abrasive grains having an average grain size of 2.0-6.5 &#x3bc;m on a surface which abuts the fixing surface. The toner comprises a crystalline polyester resin and exhibits G' (storage elastic modulus) of 1.0&#xd7;10Pa or lower at 70&#xb0; C. in a temperature rising in a viscoelasticity measurement, G&#x2032; of 1.0&#xd7;10Pa or higher at 70&#xb0; C. in a temperature falling in the viscoelasticity measurement, and an endothermic peak indicating an amount of heat absorption of from 2.0 to 8.0 J/g, derived from the crystalline polyester resin, in a first temperature rising in DSC.

Image forming apparatus and image forming method

There is provided a grinding roller for use in a fixing device including a pair of rotary fixing members that rotate while being pressed against each other to form an area of contact, and heat and press a recording medium carrying an unfixed toner image and fed to the area of contact, to thereby fix the unfixed toner image on the recording medium. The grinding roller is configured to grind a surface of a toner image-side rotary member of the pair of rotary fixing members that comes into contact with the unfixed toner image. The grinding roller includes an abrasive grain layer including abrasive grains, forming a surface layer of the grinding roller, and having a surface with irregularities including projections each formed by an aggregate of some of the abrasive grains and larger in size than each of the abrasive grains and recesses formed between the projections.

Grinding roller, fixing device, and image forming apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Yoshihisa Hara