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:
Apr. 16, 2002
Filed:
Sep. 28, 2000
Tsuyoshi Todome, Kawasaki, JP;
Toshiba Tec Kabushiki Kaisha, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An image forming apparatus is provided with an electrostatic charging unit, an exposure unit, a developing unit, a feeding unit, a transfer unit, a peeling-off unit, a fixing device and also a cooling mechanism used when taking out a jamming sheet in the fixing device. The fixing device consists of a fixing unit having fixing rollers and discharge guide unit for discharging a sheet after fixed by the fixing unit. The cooling mechanism, such as, a cooling fan or a refrigerant cooling unit, is provided at the discharge guide, to cool the jamming sheet that has caused jamming only in the fixing unit and discharged therefrom. Time for cooling the jamming sheet may be controlled by a user manual operation or for a predetermined period within a recovery allowable time, so as not to cool the fixing rollers, which would otherwise cause a long recovery time. Or, the cooling mechanism may start a cooling operation after detecting that a door provided at the front of the image forming apparatus has been opened for taking out the jamming sheet.