Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Kao Corporation

Yuji Kawaguchi

Shinji Katagiri

Masaru Ohno

Takuya Kitamura

Jun Miura

Masanori Tanaka

Takahiro Kawamoto

Kazuhiro Okubo

Takeo Kawanami

Masaru Shimura

Yu Fukasawa

Tsuguhiro Yoshida

Motoki Adachi

Takuya Kawakami

Takayuki Kanazawa

Shuhei Kawasaki

Hideo Kihara

Taro Minobe

Yuta Isobe

Takahiro Ikeda

Shunsuke Mizukoshi

Yoshikuni Ito

Satoru Motohashi

Shusuke Akazaki

Tetsuo Endoh

Minoru Nakamura

Hiroshi Hashimoto

Norio Suzuki

Harunobu Ogaki

Kazunori Noguchi

Daisuke Miura

Kazunari Hagiwara

Yasuhiro Toyoda

Daisuke Aoki

Takayuki Namiki

Kouki Yano

Takaaki Shinkawa

Kentarou Kawata

Satoshi Takami

Kentaro Kawata

Shinichi Agata

Takashi Mukai

Tatsuya Yamaai

Shuhei Iwasaki

Akira Sakakibara

Koji Sasajima

Ichiro Sakai

Taketo Kamei

Hidesato Kizaki

Yasuhisa Arai

Michiaki Fujita

Makoto Hatakeyama

Yoshio Suzuki

Tomio Aoi

Toshihiro Kameda

Katsuhide Misono

Kiyohide Nagase

Makoto Kishida

Shinichi Tsunekawa

Shohei Matsumoto

Kazuhisa Ogishi

Yoshiki Yano

Kozo Ohira

Isao Murakami

Akihiro Iwasaki

Yoshimasa Misonow

Shinji Chizaki

Yoshihiro Maruyama

A developing device includes a developing member to carry developer stored by a developing frame, and a regulating blade having a support plate fixed to the developing frame, a plate-like member, and a regulating member. One end portion of the plate-like member is opposed to the developing member, and the other end portion is welded to the support plate. The regulating member is fixed to a plate-like member surface, and contacts the developing member to regulate a developer thickness on a developing surface. The regulating member is provided with a recessed portion recessed at a regulating member end portion. The regulating member end portion is lower than a regulating member central portion. A plate-like member region welded to the support plate is located at the plate-like member other end portion and overlaps the regulating member central portion and the regulating member end portion at which the recessed portion is provided.

Developing device

Developing device to reduce leakage of developer

A developing apparatus for use in an image forming apparatus includes a developing frame, a rotatable developing member, a regulation blade to regulate developer borne on a developing member surface, and a seal member to prevent developer from leaking outside the developing frame. The regulation blade includes a support plate, a plate-shaped member, and a regulation member. The seal member is fixed to a facing surface of the plate-shaped member, is arranged at a plate-shaped member end portion, is arranged side by side with the regulation member in a rotational axis direction, contacts an end surface of the regulation member, and is disposed between the plate-shaped member and the developing member in a direction intersecting with the rotational axis direction. The plate-shaped member is welded to a region of the support plate excluding a region outside the end surface of the regulation member in the rotational axis direction.

Developing apparatus to increase adhesion between a seal member and a regulation portion in the developing apparatus

An image forming apparatus using a contact charging method includes a control unit capable of executing cleaning in a post-rotation step at the end of a job and in an inter-image step during execution of the job. The cleaning involves moving toner adhering to a charging member from the charging member to an image bearing member. The job is a series of operations started by a predetermined start instruction and involving forming an image on one or more recording materials and outputting the one or more recording materials. When an instruction to start the next job is input during execution of cleaning in the post-rotation step, the control unit stops the cleaning in the middle of the execution, starts the next job, and adjusts timing for executing subsequent cleaning on the basis of information relating to the amount of cleaning executed before being stopped in the middle of the execution.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes an image bearing member, a charging unit that charges the image bearing member by discharge, a developing unit that rotates while being in contact with the image bearing member and supplies a developer to the image bearing member, a transfer unit that transfers a developer image from the image bearing member to a transferred member, a detecting unit that detects an electric current flowing or a voltage generated when a direct-current voltage less than a discharge starting voltage is applied to a contact member in contact with the image bearing member, and a control unit that executes detection using the detecting unit in a non-image-forming period, wherein when the detection result satisfies a first condition, the control unit starts a rotating operation for rotating the developing member, and wherein when the detection result satisfies a second condition, the control unit terminates the rotating operation.

Image forming apparatus capable of efficiently reducing the influence of discharge products adhering to the surface of an image bearing member

A voltage maintenance element is connected to a contact member that contacts a primary transfer surface area of an intermediate transfer belt to which toner images are transferred from a plurality of image carriers between stretch members, in such a way as to prevent the electric potential of the intermediate transfer belt from varying between respective image forming stations.

Image forming apparatus having transfer power source that applies voltage to secondary transfer member to perform secondary transfer of toner images from electrically conductive intermediate transfer belt to recording materials, toner images on image carrier primarily transferred to belt by transfer power source and contact member in which an electric potential is formed by constant-voltage element, transfer power source and auxiliary power source

In an image forming apparatus which includes a plurality of image forming units each including an image bearing member, a contact charging member, and a developer bearing member for forming toner of normal polarity, and which, in a printing operation, applies a charging bias having a first direction, in a cleaning operation, applies a charging bias having a second direction, and recovers residual toner remaining on the image bearing member which was not used for printing by the developer bearing member, before performing the cleaning operation, when successively performing the printing operation on a plurality of recording materials including a first recording material and a second recording material, which is used for printing following the first recording material, the charging voltage larger in absolute value in the printing operation for the second recording material than in the printing operation for the first recording material is applied.

Image forming apparatus having recovery of toner by developing member, control of charging voltage and charging member cleaning operation

An image forming apparatus includes image forming units each of which includes an image bearing member, a contact charging member, and a developer bearing member of a toner, applies a charging bias in a direction in which the toner moves from the image bearing member to the charging member in an image forming period, and applied a charging bias of an opposite polarity relative to that in the image formation in a cleaning period, and collects the toner by the developer bearing member. In consecutive image formation, a charging bias in the image forming period is applied in a first interval period and which is between first and second image forming periods and a second interval period which is between second and third image forming periods. An absolute value of a charging bias applied in the second interval period is larger than that applied in the first interval period.

In an image forming apparatus, a control unit performs a control to cause an exposing unit to expose a plurality of image bearing members at different times to form exposure regions on the plurality of image bearing members, to acquire results acquired by applying direct current voltage lower than discharge start voltage to a plurality of abutting members by an applying unit when the exposure regions pass by abutting parts against the abutting members and detected by a detecting unit, and to, based on the acquired results of the detections, acquire information regarding the surface potentials of the plurality of image bearing members.

Image forming apparatus to acquire image bearing member surface potentials

A process cartridge configured to be detachably attachable to a main body of an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, in which an occurrence of an image failure is suppressed, wherein the process cartridge includes an electrophotographic photosensitive member and a cleaning member arranged in contact with the electrophotographic photosensitive member, wherein an elastic deformation modulus of a surface layer of the electrophotographic photosensitive member is 35% or larger, and the cleaning member is formed of a urethane foam, wherein a density of the urethane foam is 200 to 500 kg/cm, and a 25% compressive load of the urethane foam is 0.3 MPa or smaller.

Process cartridge and electrophotographic image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus using a contact charging method includes a control unit capable of executing cleaning in a post-rotation step at the end of a job and in an inter-image step during execution of the job. The cleaning involves moving toner adhering to a charging member from the charging member to an image bearing member. The job is a series of operations started by a predetermined start instruction and involving forming an image on one or more recording materials and outputting the one or more recording materials. When an instruction to start the next job is input during execution of cleaning in the post-rotation step, the control unit stops the cleaning in the middle of the execution, starts the next job, and adjusts timing for executing subsequent cleaning on the basis of information. relating to the amount of cleaning executed before being stopped in the middle of the execution.

A control unit of an image forming apparatus controls, in an image forming mode, a potential difference obtained by subtracting the voltage applied to the developer bearing member from the voltage applied to the regulating member so that the potential difference is set to the polarity of the developer, and the control unit controls, in a lubricant discharge mode, the potential difference obtained by subtracting the voltage applied to the developer bearing member from the voltage applied to the regulating member so that the potential difference is set to the polarity of the lubricant or '0'.

An image forming apparatus operable in a mode of forming an image using only a part of image forming stations. In the mode, a developing device contacts an image bearing member in a part of the image forming stations, and the developing device is spaced from the image bearing member in the rest of the image forming stations. The contact pressure between the image bearing member and a transferring device is made smaller in the rest than in the part. The image forming operation in the mode is executed while the image bearing members of the part and the rest are rotated. A controller is configured such that when the operation in the mode is continuously executed for a time period longer than a predetermined period, the contact pressure in the rest is made larger than the above-mentioned smaller contact pressure.

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Tokyo, Japan

Yuji Kawaguchi