Image forming apparatus
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorKazuhiro Doda
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image forming apparatus includes a fixing unit including a tubular film, a pressure roller, and a heater including a heating element. The apparatus further includes a control unit configured to calculate an accumulated electrical energy supplied to a portion of the heating element. The portion of the heating element is located in an area corresponding to a second area of the nip portion. The second area is an area of the nip portion through which the recording material conveyed to the nip portion is not passed. The control unit is configured to determine an operation of heat leveling, which is performed for leveling a heat distribution in the nip portion after the recording material had passed the nip portion, based on the calculated accumulated electrical energy.
Claims11
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- a fixing unit including a tubular film, a pressure roller abutting against an outer surface of the film to form a nip portion, and a heater including a heating element, wherein the fixing unit is configured to fix a toner image to a recording material by heating the toner image on the recording material with the heater at the nip portion;
- and
- a control unit configured to:
- in a case where an accumulated electrical energy supplied to a portion of the heating element, is a first amount, perform a heat-leveling operation for a first period of time after the recording material has passed the nip portion, the heat-leveling operation being an operation for leveling a heat distribution in the nip portion;
- and
- in a case where the accumulated electrical energy supplied to the portion of the heating element is a second amount greater than the first amount, perform the heat-leveling operation for a second period of time longer than the first period of time after the recording material has passed the nip portion,
- wherein a first area of the nip portion is an area through which the recording material conveyed to the nip portion passes and a second area of the nip portion is an area through which the recording material conveyed to the nip portion does not pass, and
- wherein the portion of the heating element is located in an area corresponding to the second area of the nip portion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.