Color image forming apparatus
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsMasaru Shimura, Hideo Nanataki, Shinsuke Kobayashi, Shinji Katagiri, Yasunari Watanabe, Hideaki Hasegawa, Kiyoto Toyoizumi, Kouji Yasukawa
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Abstract
In a color image forming apparatus, the amount of light of an exposure unit for a weak exposure is changed according to a remaining service life of a photosensitive drum when the weak exposure is performed for the background area of a corresponding photosensitive drum by using the exposure unit.
Claims9
A color image forming apparatus including photosensitive members, charging units configured to charge the photosensitive members, light beam emission units configured to form an electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive member charged by being irradiated with light beam, and developing units configured to visualize a toner image by applying toner to the electrostatic latent image, corresponding to a plurality of colors, respectively, the color image forming apparatus comprising:
- an acquisition unit configured to acquire information concerning a remaining service life of each of the plurality of photosensitive members corresponding to the plurality of colors;
- and
- a control unit configured to cause each of the plurality of the light beam emission units to execute normal light beam emission for visualizing the toner image onto an area where the toner image is to be visualized on the charged photosensitive member, and cause the plurality of light beam emission units to execute weak light beam emission onto a background area where the toner image is not to be visualized on the charged photosensitive member,
- wherein at least so as to reduce variability of surface potential on the background area of each of the plurality of charged photosensitive members, the control unit changes the amount of light of each of the plurality of the light beam emission units based on information concerning the remaining service life of each of the photosensitive member acquired by the acquisition unit.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.