Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc.

Konica Minolta, Inc.

Konica-minolta Holdings, Inc.

Konica Corporation

Konica Minolta Technosearch Co., Ltd.

Yoshihito Sasamoto

Akifumi Isobe

Tadayuki Ueda

Takashi Nara

Norio Joichi

Yoshiki Katayama

Atsushi Takahashi

Youbao Peng

Toru Kasamatsu

Hiroyuki Watanabe

Satoshi Miyajima

Eiji Nishikawa

Akinori Kimata

Takeshi Tamada

Ryuji Okutomi

Takanobu Shiki

Kazumichi Yamauchi

Katsuyuki Ikuta

Shigeo Ogino

Teruhiko Fujikura

Hiroshi Matsumoto

Hideaki Tanaka

Kenji Tamaki

Masahiro Kamiya

Kazutoshi Yoshimura

Masami Maruko

Yuhei Tatsumoto

Akihiro Hayashi

Hiroshi Eguchi

Kenji Yamamoto

Kosuke Sasaki

Hideo Yamane

Yasuhiro Koide

Makoto Shimazoe

Shinobu Kishi

Naohiko Hanyu

Kiyoaki Kawamoto

Kazumichi Yoshida

Shota Igo

Yasuo Koyanagi

Tetsuko Kurosu

Masaaki Goto

Takayuki Ueda

Yoshihiki Katayama

Hiroomi Miyaki

Yuhou Bou

A stiffness measuring device includes a holding portion that holds a recording material so that a recording surface of the recording material is substantially parallel to a vertical direction, a pressing portion, and a stiffness acquiring section. The pressing portion presses a measurement point located on a lower side in the vertical direction than the portion of the recording material held by the holding portion. The stiffness acquiring section measures a reaction force obtained when the measurement point is pressed by the pressing portion and acquires the measured reaction force as the stiffness of the recording material.

Stiffness measuring device, image forming system, and stiffness measuring method

An image forming device includes: a transfer unit transferring a toner image to a sheet; a resistance measurement member disposed on the upstream side in a sheet carriage direction of the transfer unit and for measuring resistance of the sheet; a charge elimination member disposed between the transfer unit and the resistance measurement member in the sheet carriage direction; a first voltage applying unit applying voltage for resistance measurement to the resistance measurement member; and a second voltage applying unit applying voltage of reverse bias of the voltage for resistance measurement to the charge elimination member. The width of a charge elimination region by the charge elimination member is wider than that of a charged region by the resistance measurement member in a direction perpendicular to the sheet carriage direction. The absolute value of the voltage for charge elimination is smaller than that of the voltage for resistance measurement.

Image forming device

A control device that controls an image former, includes: a second power supply that performs power feeding to a detector during a power feeding suspension period during which power feeding from a first power supply to the image former and the detector is not performed, the detector detecting an environment variable around the image former, the environment variable affecting quality of an image formed by the image former; and a determiner that determines a control condition for the image former in accordance with a result of detection performed by the detector during the power feeding suspension period, when power feeding from the first power supply to the image former is started at an end of the power feeding suspension period and the image former enters an image formation ready state in which the image former can perform image formation.

Control device, image forming apparatus, and program

An excessive heating protection circuit to be connected to a first temperature sensor being configured to output less voltage with a rise in temperature and a second temperature sensor being configured to output more voltage with a rise in temperature. The excessive heating protection circuit includes: a multiplexer having a plurality of channels capable of receiving reference voltages predetermined for the first and second temperature sensors, the multiplexer being configured to output one of the reference voltages by selecting one of the channels with reference to input selection signals; a first comparator being configured to compare the output voltage of the first temperature sensor to the output reference voltage of the multiplexer and to output a comparison result; and a second comparator being configured to compare the output voltage of the second temperature sensor to the output reference voltage of the multiplexer and to output a comparison result.

Excessive heating protection circuit and image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus forms decision registration mark for deciding whether or not a color registration correction for correcting color shifts in the color image carries out on an intermediate transfer belt. The decision registration mark is formed by registering four color registration marks. Color registration sensors detect a detection width of the decision registration mark along a sub scanning direction. A control portion receives the detection width of the decision registration mark and decides whether or not the color registration correction carries out based on whether or not the detection width of the decision mark detected by the detection portion exceeds the period of reference time. When the detection width of the decision mark detected by the detection portion exceeds the period of reference time, the control portion carries out the color registration correction.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes a plurality of heatersfor heating the fixing roller, a plurality of temperature sensorsfor detecting the temperatures of the areas to be heated by the plurality of heatersrespectively, and a control unitfor turning on and off the plurality of heaterson the basis of the temperatures detected by the plurality of temperature sensors. If one of the heatersis on when the area to be heated by the other heater cools down to the ON temperature, the control unitturns on the other heater with the same timing as the one heater is turned off.

Image forming apparatus provided with fixing unit for fixing images formed on paper and method of controlling heaters of the apparatus

An image forming apparatus which allows a user to freely select a desired image quality is provided. The control unitsets a of registration set value Afor determining a color registration error suppression level and a dropout set value Afor determining a dropout occurrence suppression level. Also, the control unitsets a differential circumferential speed which is the difference between the circumferential speed of photoreceptor drumsY toK and the circumferential speed of an intermediate transfer belton the basis of the color registration set value Aand the dropout set value A. Then, the control unitcontrols the belt drive motorand the drum drive motoron the basis of the differential circumferential speed which is set.

An image forming apparatus includes an adjustment unit that adjusts an image transfer position of the sheet of paper along a main scanning direction that is orthogonal to a transporting direction of the sheet of paper, a fixing unit that fixes on the sheet of paper an toner image using fixing rollers and performs a fluctuation of the fixing roller to the main scanning direction, a detection unit that detects whether or not the fixing rollers of the fixing unit nip the sheet of paper, and a controller. The controller controls the fixing unit to perform the fluctuation of the fixing rollers when determining that the fixing rollers of the fixing unit do not nip the sheet of paper based on a detection result of the detection unit.

Image forming apparatus which controls fluctuation of fixing rollers based on a detected interval between transferred sheets of recording media

A printing control apparatus connected via a network with one or more of image forming apparatuses includes: a power source detection section which detects an image forming apparatus turned on; and a setting section which sets a mode shift time for shifting from a normal power mode to a power saving power mode a power consumption of which is less than a power consumption of the normal power mode of each of the image forming apparatuses; and a notice section which notices the set mode shift time to the image forming apparatus corresponding to the mode shift time, wherein the setting section changes the mode shift time when a plurality of image forming apparatuses which has been turned on is connected with the network, by comparing with a case when the network is connected with only one image forming apparatus turned on.

Printing control apparatus, image forming apparatus and printing system

An image forming apparatus includes: an image forming section which transfers a toner image in accordance with image data onto a recording sheet; a first fixing device having a first fixing roller, which fixes the toner image onto the recording sheet with heat; a second fixing device having a second fixing roller, which further applies heat to the recording sheet that has been fixed by the first fixing device; a second fixing roller surface roughness prevention mechanism which prevents a roughness on a surface of the second fixing roller that has been generated due to side ends of the recording sheet being brought into contact with the surface of the second fixing roller; and a controller which controls the image forming section, the first and second fixing devices and the second fixing roller surface roughness prevention mechanism.

Image forming apparatus, image fixing device and image forming system equipped therewith

Provided are an image forming apparatus, a fixing device, and an image forming system using the same, including: an image forming section for transferring a toner image onto a recording sheet; a first and second fixing rollers for thermally fixing the toner image on the recording sheet; a first and second temperature sensors each provided at a plurality of positions in a longitudinal direction of the fixing roller; and a rocking section for reciprocally shifting at least one of the fixing rollers in the longitudinal direction of the fixing roller, wherein the temperature gradient of each of the fixing rollers is detected, a central position of reciprocal shift of one fixing roller which can be shifted is set such that the temperature gradient of the other fixing roller is cancelled, and then the one fixing roller is reciprocally shifted by the rocking section.

Image forming apparatus, fixing device, and image forming system using the same

A color image forming apparatus for forming toner images by carrying out charging, exposure, and development on at least one photoreceptor drum, and forming color images by transferring the toner images onto sheets, the color image forming apparatus including: a photoreceptor drum which rotates around an axis; an exposure section which intermittently emits a light beam onto the cylindrical surface of the rotating photoreceptor drum along scanning lines parallel to the axis of the photoreceptor drum; a calculation section which calculates a printing ratio of a color image to be formed on one sheet, wherein the printing ratio is the ratio of the area covered by toner in the color image; and a timing control section which controls a timing when the exposure section emits the light beam in a direction of rotation of the photoreceptor drum based on the printing ratio calculated by the calculation section.

Color image forming apparatus with exposure timing control based on printing ratio

To enhance the fixing quality of a fixing device to continuously fix sheets of a plurality of sizes, a carbon nanotube sheet, in which a plurality of carbon nanotubes are arranged such that the longitudinal directions thereof are oriented in the same direction, is provided on the surface of a heating rollerso that the carbon nanotube sheet ranges from the position a predetermined distance inside and the position a predetermined distance outside of the position through which each of the both edges of a sheet Pwith smaller width dimension than a sheet Pof the largest width dimension to be fixed passes.

Fixing device and image forming apparatus using the same

An image forming apparatus having a color mode and a monochromatic mode, which includes: a transmission member, which can be switched between a transmitted state where a motor transfers a drive force to a single photoreceptor drum and a non-transmitted state where the motor does not transfer the drive force to the single photoreceptor drum; and a controller which switches to the non-transmitted state while executing an image formation in the monochromatic mode, and when a command to execute a next image formation is not instructed, switches to the transmitted state after a phase adjustment of each photoreceptor drum after the image formation in the monochromatic mode, and controls the motor to execute a slight rotation operation at every prescribed period of time by synchronizing plural drums including the single photoreceptor drum with each other through the transmission member.

A color image forming apparatus including: an image forming section which forms an image based on image information on an image carrier provided in the image forming section; a detection section which detects a print mark for color misalignment correction formed on the image carrier by the image forming section, and outputs print mark detection information; and a control section for executing color misalignment correction control based on the print mark detection information outputted from the detection section, wherein, the control section obtains a trend of a color misalignment amount of the print mark by statistically processing data of the result of the print mark detection, calculates an execution timing of color misalignment correction base on the obtained trend, and executes the color misalignment correction at the calculated execution timing.

Color image forming apparatus and image forming method

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Hachioji, Japan

Yoshihito Sasamoto