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AssigneeKabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
InventorsOsamu Takagi, Yoshiya Hashimoto, Hiroshi Murata, Kazuhisa Kimura
Estimating the term…
As an image forming apparatus of this invention, a color copying machine in which four image forming units are juxtaposed along the convey direction of a paper sheet is known. Each image forming unit has a photosensitive drum which is in rolling contact with a conveyor belt. Around the photosensitive drum, a charging device, exposure device, developing device, transfer device, cleaning device, and charge removing device are placed in turn along the rotation direction of the drum. An image unit is interposed between the photosensitive drum in the predetermined image forming unit, and the photosensitive drum in the image forming unit, which neighbors that image forming unit on its upstream side. The image unit integrally holds the developing device for developing an electrostatic latent image formed on the downstream photosensitive drum, and the cleaning device for cleaning the upstream photosensitive drum. Also, the image unit is detachably inserted between the two neighboring photosensitive drums.
An image forming apparatus comprising:
An image unit detachably attached to an image forming apparatus, in which a plurality of image forming means, each of which has an image carrier that rotates along a convey direction of a transfer medium, electrostatic latent image forming means for forming an electrostatic latent image on a circumferential surface of said image carrier, a developing device for developing the electrostatic latent image by supplying a developing agent, a transfer device for transferring a developing agent image developed by said developing device onto the transfer medium conveyed in the convey direction, and a cleaning device including a blade for scraping off a residual developing agent which remains on the circumferential surface of said image carrier without being transferred by said transfer device, and a recovery portion for recovering scraped off residual developing agent, are juxtaposed in the convey direction, and which forms an image by sequentially transferring developing agent images formed by individual image forming means onto the transfer medium conveyed via these image forming means,
An image forming apparatus for forming a plurality of images on a plurality of image carriers and sequentially transferring the plurality of images onto a sheet medium being conveyed in a predetermined direction, thereby forming an image on the medium, the image forming apparatus comprising:
An image forming apparatus which comprises a plurality of image units and a plurality of image forming means juxtaposed in a convey direction, each of said plurality of image forming means having an image carrier that rotates along the convey direction of a transfer medium, electrostatic latent image forming means for forming an electrostatic latent image on a circumferential surface of said image carrier, a developing device for developing the electrostatic latent image by supplying a developing agent, a transfer device for transferring a developing agent image developed by said developing device onto the transfer medium conveyed in the convey direction, and a cleaning device for cleaning a residual developing agent which remains on the circumferential surface of said image carrier without being transferred by said transfer device, said image forming apparatus forming an image by sequentially transferring developing agent images formed by individual image forming means onto the transfer medium conveyed via these image forming means,
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.