Image forming apparatus
AssigneeKYOCERA Document Solutions Inc.
InventorsEiji GYOTOKU, Masahito ISHINO, Jun NAKAI
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image forming apparatus includes an image bearing member, a developing unit, a cleaning unit, and a heating element. The heating element for heating the image bearing member includes: a substrate having a length corresponding to an entire region of the image bearing member in a longitudinal direction of the image bearing member; and a plurality of resistor chips mounted on the substrate. At least either resistance values or spacing intervals of the resistor chips vary in a longitudinal direction of the substrate to ensure that the surface temperature distribution of the image bearing member heated by the heating element is uniform.
Claims11
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- an image bearing member including a photosensitive layer;
- a developing unit configured to form a toner image by supplying a developing agent containing toner to the image bearing member to cause the toner to adhere to a surface of the image bearing member in conformity with an electrostatic latent image formed on the image bearing member;
- a cleaning unit configured to remove residual toner from the surface of the image bearing member;
- a heating element configured to heat the image bearing member, the heating element including
- a substrate having a length corresponding to an entire region of the image bearing member in a longitudinal direction of the image bearing member, and
- a plurality of resistor chips mounted on the substrate such that at least either resistance values or spacing intervals of the resistor chips vary in a longitudinal direction of the substrate, thereby causing the image bearing member to have a uniform temperature distribution when heated by the heating element.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.