Image forming apparatus and belt tensioning unit
AssigneeRicoh Company, Ltd.
InventorsKenji SENGOKU, Ryuuichi Mimbu, Junpei Fujita, Osamu Ichihashi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image forming apparatus includes: a belt unit that includes a belt-shaped image carrier stretched around and driven to rotate by a plurality of rollers; a belt tensioning unit that includes a tensioning member that is brought into contact with an image carrying surface of the belt-shaped image carrier and applies tension to the belt-shaped image carrier; and a cleaning unit that includes a cleaning member that is brought into contact with the image carrying surface of the belt-shaped image carrier and cleans the image carrying surface. The cleaning unit is supported by the belt tensioning unit in an attachable and detachable manner.
Claims16
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- a belt unit that includes a belt-shaped image carrier stretched around a plurality of rollers;
- a belt tensioning unit that includes a tensioning member that is brought into contact with an image carrying surface of the belt-shaped image carrier and applies tension to the belt-shaped image carrier;
- and
- a cleaning unit that includes a cleaning member that is brought into contact with the image carrying surface of the belt-shaped image carrier and cleans the image carrying surface, wherein
- the cleaning unit is supported by the belt tensioning unit in an attachable and detachable manner.
A belt tensioning unit provided in a main body of an image forming apparatus, the belt tensioning unit comprising:
- a tensioning member that is brought into contact with an image carrying surface of a belt-shaped image carrier that is stretched around and driven to rotate by a plurality of rollers;
- and
- a pressing unit that presses the tensioning member against the image carrying surface of the belt-shaped image carrier, wherein
- the belt tensioning unit, having no tension-reducing unit that releases the belt-shaped image carrier from a pressed state caused by the tensioning member, is attachable to and detachable from one of the main body of the image forming apparatus and a belt unit that includes the belt-shaped image carrier when the image forming apparatus stops an operation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.