Reduction of wear on selected components in multi-color imaging apparatus

A system to selectively disengage a color-associated rotatable-toner-transfer-device in an imaging apparatus, comprising:

• a rotatable-toner-transfer-device disengagement unit;
• a processor and a computer readable memory device;
• and
• a rotatable-toner-transfer-device disengage program which is stored in the memory device, and which is executable by the processor to allow the rotatable-toner-transfer-device disengagement unit to selectively disengage the color-associated rotatable-toner-transfer-device.

A method of reducing wear on wearable color-associated components within a multi-color imaging apparatus, the multi-color imaging apparatus being configured to generate both single-color and multi-color images on imaging media, the method comprising:

• identifying a selected color-associated component which will not be used to generate the image;
• disengaging the selected color-associated component;
• and
• generating the image while the selected color-associated component is disengaged.

A four-color imaging apparatus configured to generate an image on imaging media and to support a plurality of rotatable-toner-transfer-devices, each rotatable-toner-transfer-device being associated with one of the four colors, the multi-color imaging apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of rotatable-toner-transfer-device disengagement units configured to selectively disengage at least three separate color-associated rotatable-toner-transfer-devices, the disengagement being dependent on whether the separate color-associated rotatable-toner-transfer-devices are required to generate the image;
• a processor;
• a computer readable memory device;
• and
• a rotatable-toner-transfer-device disengage program which is stored in the computer-readable memory device, and which is executable by the processor to allow one or more of the rotatable-toner-transfer-device disengagement units to selectively disengage the selected color-associated rotatable-toner-transfer-devices based on whether the selected color-associated rotatable-toner-transfer-devices are required to generate an image.