Image forming apparatus and cooling method capable of suppressing unnecessary cooling of fixing portion

Abstract

An image forming apparatus includes a fixing portion, a first acquisition processing portion, a first determination processing portion, and a restriction processing portion. The fixing portion is provided rotatably around a rotation shaft. The first acquisition processing portion acquires first temperature information regarding the temperature of the fixing portion at the end of a first image forming process of forming an image on a first sheet whose size in a width direction along the rotation shaft is smaller than a reference size. The first determination processing portion determines an execution time of a cooling process of cooling the fixing portion, based on the first temperature information. In a case where the execution time of the cooling process determined by the first determination processing portion exceeds an upper limit time, the restriction processing portion restricts the execution of the cooling process exceeding the upper limit time.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.