JP2007047678A - Conveying property evaluation method for material to be recorded - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a conveying property evaluation method for a material to be recorded, with which it can be correctly judged whether winding occurs or not in an electrophotographic system print fixing section, in a short time, without actually passing the material to be recorded through a machine. <P>SOLUTION: The conveying property evaluation method for the material to be recorded is a conveying property evaluation method for evaluating conveying property defects due to the winding in the fixing section of the material to be recorded which is used in an electrophotographic system having the fixing section. Evaluation is performed by peeling strength when a sample obtained by sticking together a fixing member for forming a contact surface with the material to be recorded in the fixing section and the material to be recorded is press-fixed and then, peeled. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material in a fixing unit of electrophotographic printing.

  On-demand image output has progressed, and what is conventionally printed by offset printing has been increasingly printed by electrophotographic printers. Accordingly, in addition to the non-coated recording material called plain paper, there is an increasing demand to use a recording material on which various chemicals such as pressure-sensitive paper and pressure-sensitive paper are coated with the electrophotographic method. Even in an ink jet system capable of printing with higher image quality than an electrophotographic system, a recording material coated on the surface is often used to obtain a high image quality. Therefore, in a place where an electrophotographic system and an inkjet system are used in combination, an ink-jet recording material that can be shared by an electrophotographic printer is desired.

  However, some of the surface-coated recording materials that are increasingly demanded for use on demand, including those for inkjet, may cause poor transport when used in an electrophotographic system, resulting in machine failure. Many things are connected.

  The cause of the conveyance failure is that, in the electrophotographic system, a process called a fixing unit that applies heat and pressure is necessary to fix the toner that forms an image on the surface of the recording material. This is because the surface of the recording material is in direct contact with the fixing portion at the fixing portion, and winding is caused by the surface material of the recording material.

  In order to determine the matching between such a wide variety of recording materials and electrophotographic printers, it is often the case that an actual paper passing evaluation is performed and confirmed in advance by a machine. As an evaluation method, in some cases, it may be confirmed that several thousand sheets are necessary, and it takes a lot of time, cost, and labor to evaluate. Further, when evaluating and confirming by passing paper through a machine, if there are a wide variety of machines to be used, it takes more time for evaluation such as preparation and maintenance of the machine. Therefore, by evaluating the characteristics of the recording material without using a machine, there is an evaluation method that shortens the matching evaluation time, enables a quantitative comparison, and can quickly determine the quality of matching with the machine. It has been demanded.

  Patent Document 1 discloses a method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material that defines the characteristics of the recording material used during evaluation. Thus, by limiting the characteristics of the recording material, it is possible to evaluate the ability of the machine that is not affected by the recording material, but it is not suitable for confirming matching with various recording materials.

JP 2003-109069 A

  The present invention has been made in view of the above-described problems, and the object of the present invention is to check whether or not there is wrapping in the fixing unit of electrophotographic printing accurately in a short time without actually passing through the machine. It is to provide a method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material that can be determined.

  The present invention provided to solve the above problems is a transportability evaluation method for evaluating a transportability failure due to winding of the recording material used in an electrophotographic system having a fixing section due to winding around the fixing section, A recording material characterized in that a fixing member that forms a contact surface with a recording material in the fixing unit and a sample in which the recording material is bonded are pressure-bonded and then evaluated by a peeling strength when peeling. This is a transportability evaluation method.

  Here, the peel strength is preferably defined by the maximum strength at the time of measurement.

Further, the pressure when the sample is pressure-bonded is preferably small when the recording material is easy to wind, and large when the recording material is difficult to wind.
At this time, the pressing force when the sample is pressed is preferably 5 N or more when the recording material is easy to wind, and 50 N or more when the recording material is difficult to wind. It is.

  Moreover, it is preferable that the peeling rate when peeling the said sample is 10 mm / min or more.

  In addition, it is preferable to determine a recording material having a peel strength of 1.5 N or less when a pressing force when the sample is pressed is 50 N as a recording material in which poor conveyance due to winding at the fixing portion is unlikely to occur. .

  According to the present invention, as an evaluation of the transportability of the recording material, it is possible to accurately determine in a short time whether or not the winding has occurred in the fixing portion in the electrophotographic method without passing the paper through the machine. it can.

Hereinafter, a method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material according to the present invention will be described.
FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a belt fixing device which is an example of a fixing unit.
In the belt fixing device, an endless fixing belt 1 is suspended from a plurality of rollers (heating roller 3a, fixing roller 3b) incorporating a heating element such as a halogen heater, and a pressure roller 2 is disposed at a position facing the fixing roller 3b. The pressure roller 2 is pressed against the fixing roller 3b through the fixing belt 1 with an appropriate pressure to form a nip portion for fixing the toner on the recording material. A separation claw 4 is provided on the downstream side of the nip portion.

Here, the belt fixing device operates as follows.
When the recording material having the toner transferred onto the surface is conveyed from the right side in the drawing to the fixing unit (belt fixing device), the recording material is transferred to the nip portion between the fixing belt 1 and the pressure roller 2 heated by the heating roller 3. By being sandwiched, the toner on the recording material is melted by heat and pressure and fixed as an image on the surface of the recording material. Next, the recording material is discharged from the nip portion to the left side in the figure. At this time, the recording material may stick to the fixing belt 1 or the pressure roller 2 in some cases. When this sticking is light, it can be peeled off from the surface of the fixing belt 1 or the pressure roller 2 by the separation claw 4 and conveyed to a subsequent process such as a paper discharge means (not shown). However, when the sticking is strong, the separation claw 4 cannot separate the recording material around the fixing belt 1 or the pressure roller 2 and a conveyance failure occurs.

  The recording material transportability evaluation method of the present invention is a transportability evaluation method for evaluating a transportability failure due to winding of the recording material used in an electrophotographic system having a fixing unit due to winding in the fixing unit, A fixing member (silicone rubber or the like covered with the fixing belt 1 and the pressure roller 2) that forms a contact surface with the recording material in the fixing unit and a sample bonded with the recording material are pressure-bonded, and then The recording material and the fixing member are evaluated by a peeling strength when the recording material and the fixing member are peeled by pulling in 180 degrees.

  Here, as an apparatus for measuring the peel strength, an apparatus that performs a tensile test in a uniaxial direction by moving the crosshead at a constant speed and detecting the load at that time with a load cell is suitable.

  The peel strength to be evaluated is preferably defined by the maximum strength at the time of measurement. This is because even if the peel strength (for example, the average value) between the surface of the recording material and the fixing member is low, if the peel strength is partially high, the sticking there is so strong that separation with a separation nail becomes impossible. This is because winding occurs.

  Further, since the toner is fixed on the surface of the recording material by contact heating in the fixing portion, pressure is applied to the nip portion between the fixing belt 1 and the pressure roller 2. The peel strength between the recording material and the fixing member may change due to the influence.

  Therefore, in the present invention, when the peel strength is large and the recording material is easy to wind around the fixing member, the pressing force when the sample with the fixing member and the surface of the recording material bonded is pressed is reduced. Is preferred. For example, it is sufficient to apply a pressure of 5N or more. On the other hand, when the peel strength is not so high and the recording material is difficult to wind around the fixing member, and conveyance failure occurs or does not occur, it is preferable to increase the pressure bonding force when the sample is pressure bonded. For example, in order to make a difference easily in the peel strength, it is better to set the pressure bonding force to 50 N or more.

  It should be noted that it is easy to use the weight of the weight as a method of pressing the sample in which the surface of the recording material and the fixing member are bonded together. A press machine or the like can also be used if the entire surface of the sample is to be crimped accurately.

  Moreover, it is preferable that the peeling rate when peeling a sample is 10 mm / min or more. In some actual machines (fixing portions), the linear velocity is 100 mm / sec or more, and therefore, the peeling speed when measuring the peeling strength is preferably as fast as possible. However, there is also a performance on the apparatus side for measuring the peel strength, and it is difficult to set the peel speed as fast as the machine. Accordingly, as a result of confirmation, it was found that the peeling rate may be 10 mm / min or more, more preferably 100 mm / min or more in this evaluation method. When the peeling speed is less than 10 mm / min, a tendency that the peel strength is measured to be weak is observed and it takes too much time for measurement, which is not preferable.

  In this evaluation method, a recording material having a peel strength of 1.5 N or less when a pressure force when the sample is pressure-bonded is 50 N, and a recording material that is less likely to cause poor transportability due to winding at the fixing portion. It is good to judge. When the peel strength exceeds 1.5 N, the wrapping is completely generated when the recording material passes through the fixing portion, so that the transportability is NG. Further, when the peel strength is 1.5 N or less, even if there is some sticking, it can be separated from the fixing member by the separation claw 4, so that the recording material can be transported satisfactorily at the fixing portion.

  Accordingly, it is preferable that the recording material having a peel strength of 1.5 N or less when the pressure-bonding force when the sample is pressure-bonded is made of resin, paper, a composite material thereof, or a laminated material. . In the present invention, it is possible to evaluate a recording material made of a film other than paper, synthetic paper, or the like.

  According to the recording material transportability evaluation method of the present invention described above, it is possible to evaluate the transportability at the fixing unit without passing through an actual machine, and quantitative comparison evaluation of the recording material by numerical values is possible. The merit that it is easy to do arises.

Examples of the present invention will be described below.
Four types of commercially available recording materials (PPC paper (TYPE 6200 manufactured by Ricoh), IJ-dedicated coated paper A (Canon HR-101), IJ-dedicated coated paper B (Epson's super fine paper), and pressure-sensitive paper (manufactured by Toppan Forms) ) Was actually passed through a full-color laser printer (IPSiO CX9000, manufactured by Ricoh), and the transportability at the fixing unit was confirmed. Each of the recording materials was passed through 10 sheets, and the transportability of the actual machine was evaluated according to the following evaluation criteria from the ratio of the number of sheets wound around the fixing unit to all 10 sheets.
Evaluation criteria: ○: No winding at the fixing portion, Δ: Partial winding at the fixing portion, ×: Winding at the fixing portion.

In addition, the peel strength of the recording material in the evaluation method of the present invention was measured, and the comparison with the transportability with an actual machine was performed.
Here, the fixing belt of the full color laser printer was used as a fixing member used for measurement of peel strength. Further, as the sample for measuring the peel strength, the recording material and the fixing belt were bonded together and then cut into a width of 15 mm.
When measuring the peel strength, a 5N or 50N crimping force was applied to the cut sample with a weight, and then a precision universal testing machine Autograph AGS-J type (manufactured by Shimadzu Corporation) was used for each sample. The peel speed was set to 100 mm / min, the strength was measured while pulling the recording material and the fixing belt, and the maximum value in the measured strength was taken as the peel strength.
Table 1 shows the peel strength for each recording material and the evaluation results of the transportability in an actual machine.

As a result of the above, for both PPC paper and pressure-sensitive paper with a peel strength of 1.5 N or less at any of the pressure bonding forces of 5N and 50N, no wrapping failure occurred in the full-color laser printer, and transportability was good It was. In contrast, the IJ-dedicated coated paper B had a peel strength of 1.5 N or less when the pressure was 5 N, but became greater than 1.5 N when the pressure was 50 N. Wrapping was confirmed. Further, with the IJ-dedicated coated paper A, the peel strength was greater than 1.5 N at both the pressure bonding force of 5 N and 50 N, and it was confirmed that the sheet was wound around the fixing portion with the total number of sheets conveyed.
As described above, a conveyance failure occurs when the peel strength when the pressure is 50N is greater than 1.5N, and a conveyance failure occurs when the peel strength when the pressure is 50N is 1.5N or less. Therefore, it is possible to determine the transportability at the fixing unit from the peel strength when the pressure is 50N.

1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a belt fixing device which is an example of a fixing unit.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Fixing belt 2 Pressure roller 3a Heating roller 3b Fixing roller 4 Separation claw

Claims (6)

A transportability evaluation method for evaluating a transportability defect due to winding of the recording material used in an electrophotographic system having a fixing section by winding around the fixing section,
A recording material characterized in that a fixing member that forms a contact surface with a recording material in the fixing unit and a sample in which the recording material is bonded are pressure-bonded and then evaluated by a peeling strength when peeling. Transportability evaluation method.   2. The method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material according to claim 1, wherein the peel strength is defined by a maximum strength at the time of measurement.   2. The pressure-bonding force when the sample is pressure-bonded is small when the recording material is easy to wind, and large when the recording material is difficult to wind. For evaluating the transportability of recording materials.   The pressure-bonding force when the sample is pressure-bonded is 5 N or more when the recording material is easy to wind, and 50 N or more when the recording material is difficult to wind. Item 4. A method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material according to Item 3.   The method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material according to claim 1, wherein a peeling speed when peeling the sample is 10 mm / min or more.   A recording material having a peel strength of 1.5 N or less when a pressure-bonding force when the sample is pressure-bonded is 50 N is determined as a recording material that is unlikely to cause poor conveyance due to winding at a fixing portion. The method for evaluating the transportability of a recording material according to claim 1.

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