JPH06295144A - Cleaning device for image forming device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enhance the cleaning property of a photosensitive body and to suppress fluttering caused by the traveling of a transfer image carrier or the photosensitive body by inclining a cleaning member slid and brought into contact with an endless belt with respect to the traveling direction of the endless belt. CONSTITUTION:A cleaning blade is faced to the surface side of the transfer image carrier 1 and a cleaning roll 22 is slid and brought into contact with the back side thereof. The roll 22 is inclined by (theta) with respect to the traveling direction of the carrier 1. Then, an intermittent rotation control mechanism 26 consisting of a ratchet 23, a tongue piece 24 and an intermittent driving motor 25 is coupled to the shaft of the roll 22. When the carrier 1 is driven to travel, the back side thereof is cleaned by the sliding and contacting of the roll 22. At this time, when the sliding and contacting part of the roll 22 is stained because the roll 22 is actuated to clean for a certain time, the roll 22 is turned by a prescribed angle by the control mechanism 26 so that the new part thereof is slid and brought into contact with the carrier 1.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to cleaning the endless belt of an image forming apparatus using a transfer image carrier or a photoconductor which is composed of an endless belt. The present invention relates to a cleaning device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A conventional cleaning device of this kind is, for example, a cleaning member such as a brush which rotates in the opposite direction to the running direction of a transfer image carrier of an endless belt or a fixed blade or felt. Are in contact. These cleaning members are arranged at right angles to the running direction of the transfer image carrier.

[0003]

Since the above-mentioned conventional cleaning member is in contact with the transfer image carrier composed of the endless belt at a right angle to the traveling direction,
This cleaning member comes into almost point contact with the traveling direction of the transfer image carrier, and the cleaning member interferes with vibration generated when the transfer image carrier travels and suppresses it. However, there is a problem that the above-mentioned vibration is promoted when a rotating brush is used. When the transfer image carrier vibrates, the image quality deteriorates in a multiple transfer device (full color copying machine) that requires high image quality.

The present invention has been made in view of the above, and it is possible to improve the cleaning property of a transfer image carrier or a photoconductor composed of an endless belt, and at the same time, to improve the cleaning property of the transfer image carrier or the photoconductor. It is an object of the present invention to provide a cleaning device for an image forming apparatus capable of suppressing fluttering (vibration) due to running.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, a cleaning device for an image forming apparatus according to the present invention comprises:
In the image forming apparatus in which the transfer image carrier 1 or the photoconductor 28 is composed of an endless belt, the cleaning member which is in sliding contact with the endless belt is inclined with respect to the running direction of the endless belt. A roll-shaped cleaning member is used as the cleaning member, and the cleaning member is connected to the intermittent rotation control mechanism 26.

[0006]

[Operation] The endless belt is cleaned by the cleaning member. At this time, since the cleaning member is inclined with respect to the direction perpendicular to the running direction of the endless belt, it makes long contact in the running direction and Vibration is suppressed by this cleaning member.

[0007]

EXAMPLES Examples of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows a color image forming apparatus of a full-color electronic copying apparatus to which the present invention is applied, which is a tandem type, and runs along a traveling direction of a transfer image carrier 1 made of an endless dielectric sheet. Sequentially, a plurality of image forming units 2a, 2b, 2c, 2 for black, yellow, magenta, and cyan, for example, from the upstream side in the traveling direction thereof.
d are arranged.

Each of the image forming units has the same structure and includes a drum-shaped photoconductor 3 and the photoconductor 3.
In the rotating direction of the charging device 4, the exposure unit 5, the developing device 6, the transfer auxiliary charging device 7, the transfer corotron 8, the discharging corotron 9,
The cleaning device 10 and the static elimination lamp 11 are sequentially arranged. The transfer corotron 8 is the transfer image carrier 1.
Inside the sheet, it faces the photoconductor 3 via the transfer belt 1. Further, a peeling corotron 9a is provided at the end of the transfer belt 1 in the traveling direction. 12 is a fixing device, 13 is a paper feeding device, and the paper 1 fed from the paper feeding device 13
4 is sent by the transfer image carrier 1 and is superposed and copied on the sheet 14 by the respective image forming units 2a, 2d while passing through the respective image forming units 2a, 2d. . Reference numeral 15 in the drawing denotes an optical system, and the image of the original 16 on the platen is the light source 17, the mirror 18, the lens 1
It is input to the CCD sensor 20 via 9 and is made incident on the exposure section 5 of each of the image forming units 2a to 2d from this CCD sensor 20.

A cleaning blade 21 is opposed to the front side of the transfer image carrier 1 and a cleaning roll 22 is slidably contacted to the back side thereof. The cleaning roll 22 has a structure as shown in FIGS. 2 to 4.
It is inclined by θ with respect to the traveling direction of the transfer image carrier 1. An intermittent rotation control mechanism 26 including a ratchet wheel 23, a tongue piece 24 and an intermittent drive motor 25 is connected to the shaft of the clean roll 22 as shown in FIG. The cleaning roll 22 is made of felt, for example. In addition to the cylindrical shape, the cleaning 22 may have a polygonal shape such as a hexagonal shape or an octagonal shape.

In the above structure, when the transfer image carrier 1 is driven to run, the back side of the transfer image carrier 1 is cleaned by the cleaning roll 22.
It is cleaned by rubbing. At this time, if the rubbing portion is soiled due to the cleaning operation for a certain period of time, the intermittent rotation control mechanism 26 rotates by a predetermined angle to rub a new portion of the cleaning roll 22.

When the transfer image carrier 1 is driven to run, the transfer image carrier 1 oscillates as shown in FIG. 4 due to vibrations of its driving source, eccentricity of the cleaning roller 22, external force, etc. Since the roll 22 is inclined at an angle θ with respect to the right angle to the traveling direction of the transfer image carrier 1, the roll 22 comes into contact over a certain length in the traveling direction of the transfer image carrier 1, and therefore FIG.
As shown in, the cleaning roll 22 comes into contact with at least two or more wave ranges of the waves generated by the vibration, and the peaks and troughs of the vibration are suppressed. Further, the cleaning property is improved by increasing the contact length in the traveling direction.

FIG. 5 shows another embodiment of the present invention.
A belt-like member is used instead of the cleaning roll 22, and the cleaning belt 27 makes it possible to make contact over a longer range in the traveling direction. Further, in the case of the cleaning belt 27, since the contact length can be arbitrarily set, it is not necessary to incline it.

In the above embodiment, the cleaning roll 22,
Although the case where the cleaning belt 27 is slidably contacted with the back side of the transfer image carrier 1 configured to be an endless belt to clean the back side thereof, these are slidably contacted with the front side to clean the front side of the transfer image carrier 1. May be used to

The embodiment shown in FIG. 1 shows an example in which the cleaning member according to the present invention is used in an image forming apparatus using a transfer image carrier 1 in the form of an endless belt, but as shown in FIG. It may be applied to an image forming apparatus using the belt-shaped photoconductor 28. In FIG. 6, a plurality of developing devices 29a, 29b, 29c, and
The photoconductor 28 is opposed to the transfer drum 30 at the transfer portion. Reference numeral 31 is a charging device, 32 is a transfer charging device, 33 is an exposure unit, and 34 is a cleaning device, and the cleaning roll 22 is slidably in contact with the inside of the photoconductor 28.

[0015]

According to the present invention, it is possible to improve the cleaning property of the transfer image carrier 1 or the photoconductor 28 constituted by an endless belt, and the traveling of the transfer image carrier 1 or the photoconductor 28. The fluttering due to can be suppressed by the cleaning member.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration explanatory view showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view of a main part of the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a schematic configuration explanatory view showing an example of an intermittent drive unit.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory view of the operation of the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a side view showing another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a schematic structural explanatory view showing another embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Transferred image carrier, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d ... Image forming unit, 3 ... Photoconductor, 4, 31 ... Charger, 5, 33
... Exposure unit, 6, 29a, 29b, 29d ... Developing device, 7
... transfer auxiliary charger, 8 ... transfer corotron, 9 ... static elimination corotron, 10, 34 ... cleaning device, 11 ... static elimination lamp, 12 ... fixing device, 13 ... paper feeding device, 14 ... paper,
15 ... Optical system, 16 ... Original, 17 ... Light source, 18 ... Mirror, 19 ... Lens, 20 ... CCD sensor, 21 ... Cleaning blade, 22 ... Cleaning roll, 23 ... Claw wheel, 24 ... Tongue piece, 25 ... Intermittent drive Motor, 26 ... Intermittent rotation control mechanism, 27 ... Cleaning belt, 28 ... Photoconductor, 30 ... Transfer drum.

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of front page (72) Inventor Norio Hokari 2274 Hongo, Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. (72) Inventor Junichiro Samejima 2274 Hongo, Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. An image forming apparatus in which the transfer image carrier 1 or the photoconductor 28 is composed of an endless belt, wherein a cleaning member slidingly contacting the endless belt is inclined with respect to the running direction of the endless belt. Cleaning device for image forming apparatus. 2. The cleaning device for an image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a roll-shaped cleaning member is used, and the cleaning member is connected to the intermittent rotation control mechanism 26.