Image heating apparatus and rotatable heating member used for the same

Abstract

Disclosed is an image heating apparatus. The image heating apparatus includes a rotatable heating member for heating an image on a recording material in a nip portion, and a heating unit for heating the heating member from the outside thereof. With this structure, a warm-up time period or a first print-out time period can be reduced, and low power consumption can be accomplished. Further, satisfactory image quality can be realized with no heating (fixing) irregularity. The heating member has a low thermal conductive elastic layer, and a heat storage layer outside the low thermal conductive elastic layer to have a volume heat capacity larger than the low thermal conductive elastic layer. A heat capacity of the heat storage layer per unit surface area of a fixing member is in a range of 100 J/m2K to 600 J/m2K.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.