Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.

Yuko Kawase

Noriaki Kojima

Daisuke Tano

Yu Nakamura

Shintaro Kikuchi

Masato Ono

Kei Tanaka

Satoya Sugiura

Minoru Rokutan

Yoshiki Shimodaira

Tsutomu Sugimoto

Takuro Hagiwara

Satoru Tsuto

A cleaning blade includes a polyurethane member that constitutes at least a contact portion that comes in contact with a member to be cleaned. The polyurethane member contains a polyurethane containing a hard segment component and a soft segment component. The hard segment component has a domain particle size of about 45 nm or more and about 100 nm or less.

Cleaning blade, process cartridge, and image forming apparatus

Disclosed is a cleaning blade of which a contact portion brought into contact with at least a member to be cleaned is formed of a polyurethane member that includes a polyurethane material containing a hard segment and a soft segment and has a ratio of an area occupied by a hard segment aggregate having a diameter of 0.3 &#x3bc;m to 0.7 &#x3bc;m in a cross section being in a range of 2% to 10%.

An image forming apparatus includes a charging roller including elastic and surface layers and a photoconductor drum. Initially, the surface layer has a surface roughness Rz of 3-6 &#x3bc;m, and the layers have an impedance ratio of 0.81 or less in absolute value at a frequency of 800-3000 Hz. After a predetermined time, the surface roughness Rz is reduced by a decrement &#x394;Rz of 0.1-4 &#x3bc;m. The drum has a film thickness D initially ranging from 20-40 &#x3bc;m and reduced by a decrement &#x394;D of 5-25 &#x3bc;m after the predetermined time. Herein, 0.005&#x2266;&#x394;Rz/&#x394;D&#x2266;0.8 holds. The impedance ratio is represented as ZE/(ZE+ZS) wherein ZE and ZS represent the respective impedances of the elastic layer and the surface layer, and 100k A4-size recording media recorded with images with an area coverage of 7% are printed in the predetermined time.

Image forming apparatus with decrement ratio between charging roller and photoconductor drum

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Kanagawa, Japan

Yuko Kawase