The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 22, 1998
Filed:
Jul. 16, 1996
Toshio Tooda, Kawasaki, JP;
Yoshio Yamaguchi, Kawasaki, JP;
Nobuo Kuwabara, Kawasaki, JP;
Mituru Sato, Kawasaki, JP;
Haruyasu Watanabe, Kawasaki, JP;
Akira Nagahara, Kawasaki, JP;
Sachio Sasaki, Kawasaki, JP;
Yoshiya Ishiyama, Kawasaki, JP;
Hiroshi Kera, Inagi, JP;
Masanori Nishido, Inagi, JP;
Hisashi Hanzawa, Inagi, JP;
Fujitsu Limited, Kawasaki, JP;
Abstract
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus including a toner circulating mechanism for recovering a residual toner scraped from a photosensitive drum to a developing device. The developing device includes a housing for defining a toner chamber, a developing roller rotatably mounted in the housing, an agitator rotatably mounted in the housing and provided in the toner chamber, and a partition member mounted to the housing to define a carrier chamber between the partition member and the developing roller. The toner circulating mechanism directly returns the residual toner scraped from the photosensitive drum to the toner chamber in the developing device. The toner chamber may contain a foreign matter removing device. The partition member may have various shapes.