Wet image forming apparatus including an intermediate transfer body having projections
AssigneeRicoh Company, Ltd.
InventorMakoto Obu
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Abstract
A wet image forming apparatus of the present invention includes an intermediate transfer body having an uneven surface. Projections on the uneven surface contact the surface of an image carrier and that of a paper, guaranteeing a distance between the bottoms of recesses also present on the intermediate transfer body and the above surfaces. Therefore, a toner image formed on the image carrier is prevented from being smashed by a pressure. This insures desirable transfer of the toner image from the image carrier to the intermediate transfer body, and thereby prevents image quality from being lowered on the paper.
Claims38
An image forming apparatus using a developing liquid carrying toner particles, comprising:
- a latent image forming unit configured to form a latent image on an image surface of an image carrier;
- a developing unit configured to feed the developing liquid and toner particles to said image surface to develop said latent image so as to form a developed image as a film having first film portions of developing liquid and toner particles and second film portions of developing liquid without toner particles;
- and
- an image transfer unit configured to transfer at least part of each first film portion with included toner particles from said developed image to form a recorded image on a recording medium, said image transfer unit comprising,
- an intermediate transfer body having a number of projections of predetermined height extending from a lower surface of said transfer body, said projections defining side walls for recesses having bottoms defined by the lower surface, said predetermined height of the projections providing a depth for said recesses that will accommodate toner particles transferred from the developed image without squeezing the toner particles in said recesses;
- a first transfer device configured to transfer the at least part of each first film portion with included toner particles from said developed image to said recesses to form a transfer image, and
- a second transfer device configured to transfer the at least part of each first film portion with included toner particles from the recesses forming the transfer image to the recording medium to form the recorded image.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.