Image forming apparatus
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorDaisuke Momiyama
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
When an excess period, which is period in which the total of the power predicted by a power predicting unit and power stored by a power storing unit exceeds a predetermined power, exists during continuous feeding, the power supply to a plurality of heating elements by an power control unit is adjusted so that the total of the power supplied to the plurality of heating elements and power stored by the power storing unit does not exceed the predetermined power at least during the excess period, and, after the excess period, the transport interval is adjusted so that the temperature rising to a target temperature of the plurality of heating regions by supplying power in which the adjustment is cancelled is completed before the arrival of the recording material to the fixing portion.
Claims11
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- an image forming portion which is configured to form an image on a recording material;
- a fixing portion which includes a heater constituted of a plurality of heating elements disposed in a direction orthogonal to a transport direction of a recording material, and is configured to fix the image on the recording material using heat of the heater;
- and
- a power control unit which is configured to be capable of controlling power supplied to the plurality of heating elements individually based on image information of an image formed on a recording material,
- wherein the image forming apparatus further comprises:
- an interval determining unit that is configured to determine a transport interval of a plurality of recording materials in the case of continuous feeding in which images are continuously formed on the plurality of recording materials and the images are continuously heated;
- an actuator which is configured to operate during the continuous feeding;
- a power predicting unit which is configured to predict power required for controlling the temperature of a plurality of heating regions heated by the plurality of heating elements to a predetermined target temperature based on the image information;
- a power storing unit which is configured to store power required for operating the actuator;
- and
- an adjusting unit which is configured for adjusting the power supplied to the plurality of heating elements by the power control unit, and the transport interval determined by the interval determining unit,
- wherein when an excess period, which is a period in which the total of the power predicted by the power predicting unit and power stored by the power storing unit exceeds a predetermined power, exists during continuous feeding, the adjusting unit:
- (i) at least during the excess period, adjusts power supplied to the plurality of heating elements by the power control unit, so that the total of the power supplied to the plurality of heating elements and the power stored by the power storing unit does not exceed the predetermined power, and (ii) after the excess period, adjusts the transport interval so that the temperature rising to a target temperature in the plurality of heating regions by supplying power to the plurality of heating regions in which the adjustment of the power supply is cancelled, is completed before the arrival of the recording material to the fixing portion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.