Fuser clean-up purge sheets system for duplex reproduction apparatus

Abstract

An improved fuser cleaning purge cycle system of cleaning imaging material from a fuser (particularly, a fuser roll) of a copy reproducing apparatus after an inadvertent interruption of the operation of the apparatus, such as by a paper jam, in which the fuser was potentially contaminated with imaging material from a copy sheet being fused, wherein the reproducing apparatus has an alternative duplex copying path; comprising, automatically, sequentially feeding a preset limited number of preexisting conventional clean copy sheets in the copy reproducing apparatus through the fuser to function as fuser cleaning sheets to remove the potentially contaminating imaging material, then feeding the same fuser cleaning sheets through the alternative duplex copying path back to and through the fuser a second time, with sheet inversion, so that they are inverted before feeding through the fuser the second time, and then purging these fuser cleaning sheets. The fuser cleaning cycle may be automatically initiated in response to sensing that a copy sheet was stopped in the fuser during the interruption of the operation of the reproducing apparatus. Preferably, the preset limited number of sheets used is four or less, yet, preferably, every area of the circumference of a fuser roll is contacted by at least one side of one fuser cleaning sheet a minimum of four times during this fuser cleaning cycle.