Roller covered by a covering comprising knit fabric and device employing same

A roller comprising:

• a rotating support body;
• a covering comprising knit fabric covering the surface of the rotating support body, the covering having gaps for air permeability comprising loops of yarn,
• wherein the knit fabric has steps comprising stripes in a pattern of bands in a knit fabric at a front surface or a back surface thereof, and has the stripes in the pattern of bands produced by these steps, and is supported by the surface of the rotating support body so as to be arranged such that the stripes in the pattern of bands at this knit fabric are approximately perpendicular to a rotational direction;
• this knit fabric has small loop regions and large loop regions at which loops of different size and shape are mutually adjacent in a gauge direction constituting the rotational direction;
• loops at these large loop regions are constituted so as to have little slack as a result of plastic deformation of the yarn;
• loops in the small loop regions adjacent to the large loop regions are constituted in continuous fashion to contain entangled regions of the yarn in a stitch direction constituting an axial direction;
• this knit fabric comprises two domains, these being a domain at the large loop regions comprising the constitution having little slack in the yarn and a domain at the small loop regions containing the entangled regions of the yarn;
• the steps comprising the knit fabric being present between the small loop regions and the large loop regions;
• the large loops comprising the constitution having little slack being formed in continuous fashion in the axial direction at a pitch of the small loops at the steps;
• and
• the knit fabric is formed such that it comprises the pattern of bands produced by serial arrangement of the domains of the small loops in the axial direction and by serial arrangement of the domains of the large loops with little slack in the yarn in the rotational direction;
• and this knit fabric is provided as the covering at the surface of the rotating support body.