Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Yukio Tabata

Toshiyuki Kawanishi

Kazumi Suzuki

Hajime Oyama

Satoshi Muramatsu

Nobutaka Takeuchi

Yoshihiro Norikane

Yohichiroh Watanabe

Nekka Matsuura

Akihiko Gotoh

Ichiro Kadota

Takahiro Honda

Hisashi Shoji

Seiichi Miyakawa

Kazuo Tsubuko

Shinji Ohtani

Tsuyoshi Asami

Teruyuki Ohnuma

Nobuo Mochizuki

Atsushi Shinozaki

Motohiro Usami

A method for producing a toner, including ejecting a toner composition liquid containing at least a resin and a colorant periodically from a plurality of nozzles into a chamber using a vibration unit, so as to form droplets in a gas phase; and solidifying the droplets, wherein the droplets are transported by transport air flow selected from at least one of vertical downward air flow and rotational air flow, and the method can prevent toner particles from aggregation.

Method and apparatus for producing toner

A toner, which is semispherical and has plural dents on the surface, including a binder resin; and a pigment, wherein a circle circumscribing a circular profile of the toner provides an average envelopability (AE) of 10 to 10,000 particles thereof of from 74 to 84%, which is measured by the following formula:(%)=()/100wherein AC is an area of the circle and AD is a total sum of areas of the dents.

Semispherical toner having plural dents

An image forming apparatus includes a plurality of color toner development devices, a recycled toner development device, at least one cleaning device, a toner collecting and supplying device, and an image pattern generation device. The plurality of color toner development devices store separate color toners, and the recycled toner development device stores recycled toner. The at least one cleaning device removes toner remaining on at least one image carrying member after a transfer operation. The toner collecting and supplying device stores and supplies the removed toner to the recycled toner development device. The image pattern generation device generates image patterns developed by the plurality of color toner development devices and the recycled toner development device based on a characteristic of developer and a color of the recycled toner stored in the recycled toner development device.

Method and apparatus for image forming capable of effectively recycling toner

A liquid toner for use in a liquid developer contains a dispersion medium and toner particles, each of which toner particles contains a coloring agent and a binder agent and is dispersed in the dispersion medium, the toner particles comprising small toner particles with a particle diameter of 0.1 .mu.m or less in an amount of 20 wt. % or less of the total weight of the toner particles, and having an average particle diameter of 0.3 to 5 .mu.m. Using the above-mentioned liquid toner in which the amount of the toner particles is controlled to 5 to 100 wt. % of the total weight of the liquid toner, a latent electrostatic image formed on a photoconductor can be developed to a toner image.

Liquid developer, method of producing the liquid developer and image

A non-impact electrothermic recording method using an ink sheet comprising at least an electroconductive base layer, an electroconductive thin layer and an electroconductive image transfer ink layer, with the effective resistance of the ink sheet being in the range of from 50.OMEGA. to 20 K.OMEGA., is disclosed which is carried out by superimposing the ink sheet on a recording medium and applying between an recording electrode and a return electrode situated in contact with the ink sheet (i) image-delineating voltage signals with a fixed application time, with the voltage of the image-delineating signals changed in accordance with the image density of images to be reproduced on the recording medium, or (ii) image-delineating voltage signals with a fixed voltage, with the application time changed in accordance with the image density of images to be reproduced on the recording medium, so as to generate Joule's heat in the portions in the ink sheet immediately below the recording electrode; and transferring the electroconductive thermal-transferable ink material from the ink sheet to the recording medium.

Non-impact electrothermic recording method

In an electrothermic non-impact image transfer recording material for use in an electrothermic non-impact recording method in which the electrothermic non-impact image transfer recording material is superimposed on a recording sheet, a recording electrode with multiple recording styli and a return electrode are placed in contact with the recording material, and image-delineating signal voltage is applied across the recording material through the recording electrode and the return electrode, so that an ink is transferred imagewise from the recording material to the recording sheet, the improvement wherein the electrothermic non-impact image transfer recording material comprises a base layer and an ink layer, with an intermediate layer interposed between the two layers when necessary, and the base layer comprises as the main components a polyamide resin binder, such as an aromatic polyamide or nylon, and carbon black.

Electrothermic non-impact recording material

In a non-impact recording apparatus comprising (i) a recording head comprising (a) a recording electrode consisting essentially of a plurality of recording styli, and (b) a return electrode, which are embedded in an electrically insulating support member, and (ii) an image-delineating signal application apparatus which applies image-delineating electric current between selected recording styli and the return electrode so as to generate Joule's heat in the portions in an ink ribbon containing an electroconductive thermo-fusible ink material immediately below the recording styli and to soften the ink material, thereby transferring the softened or fused ink material in image patterns to a recording medium, the improvement wherein, on the side of the recording head in contact with the surface of the ink ribbon, there is formed a groove portion out of contact with the surface of the ink ribbon between the recording electrode and the return electrode, thereby preventing the deposition of a layer of the electroconductive ink material between the recording electrode and the return electrode.

Non-impact recording apparatus

An ink ribbon for use in electrothermic non-impact recording comprising an electroconductive base layer and an electroconductive thermal-transferable ink layer which are layered. The base layer comprises a binder resin and an electroconductive material dispersed uniformly in the binder resin, while the electroconductive thermal-transferable ink layer comprises a thermoplastic material and an electroconductive material uniformly dispersed in the thermoplastic material, with the surface resistivity .rho.b of the base layer being greater than the surface resistivity .rho.i of the ink layer, and the softening or melting point Tm1 of the binder resin in the base layer being higher than the softening or melting point Tm2 of the thermoplastic material in the ink layer.

Ink ribbon for use in electrothermic non-impact recording

A non-impact recording method and apparatus capable of printing with electroconductive thermal-transferable ink on a receiving surface, with uniform image density and high resolution, and with minimum energy consumption, by embodying the steps of superimposing on a receiving surface of a recording sheet an ink ribbon comprising an electroconductive thermal-transferable ink material; placing a recording electrode having a plurality of recording styli in contact with the ink ribbon, and a return electrode in contact with the ink ribbon, the return electrode disposed at a predetermined distance from the recording electrode, substantially parallel to the recording electrode, with the contact areas with the ink ribbon of the recording electrode being smaller than the contact area with the ink ribbon of the return electrode, which predetermined distance is in the range of 2.times.d.ltoreq.Lm.ltoreq.200.times.d, where d represents the diameter of each stylus of the recording electrode, and Lm represents the minimum distance between each recording stylus and the return electrode, with the total contact area with ink ribbon of the styli being one-fifth or less of the contact area with the ink ribbon of the return electrode; applying between selected recording styli and the return electrode image-delineating electric current so as to generate Joule's heat in the portions in the ink ribbon immediately below the recording electrode; and transferring the electroconductive thermal-transferable ink material from the ink ribbon to the receiving surface of the recording sheet.

Non-impact recording method and apparatus

Electrothermic non-impact recording method and apparatus capable of printing with electroconductive thermal-transferable ink on a recording medium by reciprocating a recording head relative to the recording medium, which recording head comprises (i) a plurality of recording styli and (ii) a return electrode in contact with an electroconductive ink ribbon comprising a thermal-transferable ink material, the ink ribbon being in contact with a receiving surface of a recording medium; by applying between selected recording styli and the return electrode an image-delineating electric current, through resistor elements, each of which is connected between each of the recording styli and each of the output terminals from which the image-delineating electric current is output, the resistance of each resistor element being in the range of 1/10 to 10 times the resistance of the portion of the ink ribbon between each recording stylus and the return electrode, thus causing the image-delineating electric current to flow through the portions in the ink ribbon immediately below the selected recording styli and to generate Joule's heat in those portions, by which Joule's heat the thermal-transferable ink material in those portions is melted and made transferable; and by transferring the thermal-transferable ink material from the ink ribbon to the recording medium.

Electrothermic non-impact recording method and apparatus

An electric ink transfer recording method for obtaining a recorded matter which comprises putting a sheet to be recorded and an ink sheet generating Joule's heat when electrified and having a thermo-melting ink layer together; applying electricity to said ink sheet by contacting a return circuit electrode with the ink sheet and a recording electrode needle (stylus) with the surface of the ink sheet and impressing pulse voltage thereupon; and transferring the ink from the ink sheet to the sheet to be recorded, characterized in that an insulating liquid is interposed between the ink sheet and the recording electrode needle when obtaining the recorded matter.

Electric ink transfer recording method

An apparatus for developing a latent electrostatic image formed on a photoconductive recording material in a dry type electrophotographic copying machine typically employing a one-component type developer comprises a conductive electrode held in contact with the developer. The electrode is connected to a power source through a switching device and serves to charge the developer to a predetermined polarity with a predetermined potential before the latent image is developed. In this way, the latent image can be developed selectively as either a normal image or a reverse image quite easily.

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Numazu, Japan

Yukio Tabata