Konica Minolta, Inc.

Yoshitada Karimai

Shigetaka Kurosu

Toshiki Hayami

Tomohide Mori

Erika Sawada

Keisuke Oura

An image forming apparatus in which tension is applied to a recording medium during secondary transferring includes an image carrier, a first rotating member, a second rotating member, a tension releasing device, a voltage applier, a voltage measuring device, a nip width adjuster and a controller. The second rotating member sandwiches the image carrier with the first rotating member to from a nip. The tension releasing device releases the tension. The voltage measuring device measures the voltage between the first rotating member and the second rotating member applied by the voltage applier. The nip width adjuster adjusts a width of the nip. The controller controls the nip width adjuster so that a difference between a first voltage which is measured in a state where the tension is released and a second voltage which is measured in a state where the tension is applied within a predetermined range.

Image forming apparatus, image forming system and image forming method

An image forming apparatus includes: an image bearing member configured to be forwardly and reversely rotatable; a cleaning blade configured to make contact with the image bearing member and scrape toner remaining on the image bearing member; a toner retention section defined on an upstream side of the cleaning blade in a forward rotational direction of the image bearing member, the toner retention section being configured to retain toner scraped by the cleaning blade; a driving section configured to rotationally drive the image bearing member; and a control section configured to control the driving section to reversely rotate the image bearing member by a distance greater than a distance from a position where the image bearing member and the cleaning blade make contact with each other to an upper surface position of toner retained in the toner retention section, at a time when an image formation process is not performed.

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Hachioji, Japan

Yoshitada Karimai