Image forming apparatus including cooling mechanism for cooling heated sheet
AssigneeSharp Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorJunya Masuda
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An image forming apparatus includes an image forming portion that forms an image on a recording medium, a fixing portion that heats and fixes an image on a recording medium after forming the image, a feed path that conveys a recording medium after heating and fixing by the fixing portion, a first pair of feed rollers composed of two feed rollers provided in the feed path, and a cooling mechanism that sends cooling air to a nip portion of the pair of feed rollers or to the vicinity thereof. The cooling mechanism increases a cooling air volume when a recording medium is held between the first pair of feed rollers in comparison to the time when the recording medium is not held between the first pair of feed rollers.
Claims11
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- an image forming portion that forms an image on a recording medium;
- a fixing portion that heats and fixes an image on the recording medium after forming the image;
- a feed path that conveys the recording medium after heating and fixing by the fixing portion;
- a first pair of feed rollers composed of two feed rollers provided in the feed path;
- and
- a cooling mechanism that sends cooling air to a nip portion of the pair of feed rollers or to the vicinity thereof, wherein
- the cooling mechanism includes a cooling fan that blows the cooling air and a cooling duct that guides the cooling air to the first pair of feed rollers,
- the cooling mechanism increases a cooling air volume when the recording medium is held between the first pair of feed rollers in comparison to the time when the recording medium is not held between the first pair of feed rollers, and
- the cooling duct rotatably and integrally supports a driven roller which is one feed roller of the first pair of feed rollers.
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- an image forming portion that forms an image on a recording medium;
- a fixing portion that heats and fixes an image on the recording medium after forming the image;
- a feed path that conveys the recording medium after heating and fixing by the fixing portion;
- a first pair of feed rollers composed of two feed rollers provided in the feed path;
- a second pair of feed rollers provided on a downstream side of a feed direction of the recording medium with respect to the first pair of feed rollers;
- and
- a cooling mechanism that sends cooling air to a nip portion of the first pair of feed rollers,
- wherein the cooling mechanism increases a cooling air volume when the recording medium is held between the first pair of feed rollers, not between the second pair of feed rollers, in comparison to the time when the recording medium is not held between the first pair of feed rollers.
An image forming apparatus comprising:
- an image forming portion that forms an image on a recording medium;
- a fixing portion that heats and fixes an image on the recording medium after forming the image;
- a feed path that conveys the recording medium after heating and fixing by the fixing portion;
- two pairs of feeding rollers provided in the feed path and made up of a first pair of feed rollers provided on a side of the fixing portion in a feed direction and a second pair of feed rollers provided on a downstream side with respect to the first pair of feed rollers;
- and
- a cooling mechanism that sends cooling air to a nip portion of the pair of the first feed rollers or to the vicinity thereof,
- wherein, in a case where the recording medium is conveyed on the feed path after fixing,
- when the recording medium is held only between the first pair of feed rollers, the cooling mechanism increases a cooling air volume in comparison to the time when the recording medium is not held between the first pair of feed rollers, and
- when the recording medium is held between the first pair of feed rollers and between the second pair of feed rollers, the cooling mechanism further increases the cooling air volume, and
- when the recording medium is held only between the second pair of feed rollers, the cooling mechanism reduces the cooling air volume to a volume in a case that the recording medium is not held between the first pair of feed rollers.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.