Image forming apparatus with separately housed cleaning blade and cleaning roller
AssigneeKonica Minolta, Inc.
InventorTakashi Kawanago
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image forming apparatus which transfers, onto paper, a toner image formed on a belt-shaped image carrier including an elastic layer on a surface thereof, and forms an image includes a rigid blade which cleans the surface of the image carrier in contact with the image carrier which has transferred the toner image onto the paper; a roller which is upstream of the rigid blade in a rotation direction of the image carrier, and cleans the surface of the image carrier upstream of the rigid blade by coming in contact with the image carrier which has transferred the toner image onto the paper; a rigid blade holder which holds the rigid blade; and a roller holder which holds the roller. The rigid blade holder and the roller holder are installed with a gap therebetween.
Claims11
An image forming apparatus which transfers, onto paper, a toner image formed on a belt-shaped image carrier including an elastic layer on a surface thereof, the image forming apparatus comprising:
- a rigid blade which cleans the surface of the image carrier in contact with the image carrier which has transferred the toner image onto the paper;
- a roller which is upstream of the rigid blade in a rotation direction of the image carrier, and cleans the surface of the image carrier upstream of the rigid blade by coming in contact with the image carrier which has transferred the toner image onto the paper;
- a first casing that houses a rigid blade holder which holds the rigid blade and houses a biasing spring connected to the rigid blade holder to force the rigid blade against the image carrier;
- and
- a second casing that houses the roller, wherein
- the first casing and the second casing are installed with a gap therebetween,
- the first casing has an underside which is open, the first casing covering the rigid blade,
- the second casing has a top side which is open, the second casing covering the roller, and
- a soft member fills the gap.
An image forming apparatus which transfers, onto paper, a toner image formed on a belt-shaped image carrier including an elastic layer on a surface thereof, the image forming apparatus comprising:
- a rigid blade which cleans the surface of the image carrier in contact with the image carrier which has transferred the toner image onto the paper;
- a roller which is upstream of the rigid blade in a rotation direction of the image carrier, and cleans the surface of the image carrier upstream of the rigid blade by coming in contact with the image carrier which has transferred the toner image onto the paper;
- a first casing that houses a rigid blade holder which holds the rigid blade and houses a biasing spring connected to the rigid blade holder to force the rigid blade against the image carrier;
- and
- a second casing that houses the roller, wherein
- the first casing and the second casing are installed with a gap therebetween,
- the roller counter-rotates with respect to the image carrier, and
- a torque of equal to or greater than 0.1 N·m and equal to or less than 0.4 N·m is applied between the roller and the image carrier.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.