JP2011191610A - Image forming apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image forming apparatus equipped with a cleaning roller that prevents contamination substances from being accumulated and has sufficient durable performance. <P>SOLUTION: A cleaning roller 70 is provided for a charging roller which charges a photoreceptor of the image forming apparatus. The cleaning roller 70 cleans the charging roller by rotating together with and in contact with the charging roller. In this case, the cleaning roller 70 includes a cylindrical foam body 72 that has long-shaped foam cells 73 whose longitudinal directions are aligned with each other. The cleaning roller 70 is disposed so that the alignment direction of the foam cells 73 crosses the direction of the core material 71 of the cleaning roller 70. Accordingly, the shape of the openings of the foam cells 73 that are open in the surface of the cleaning roller 70 and the compressibility of the cleaning roller 70 in a radial direction are anisotropic. By virtue of vibration, or the like, based on the anisotropy, the cleaning roller 70 maintains cleaning capability for a long time and excels in durability. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2011,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that forms an image on a medium using toner, such as a laser printer or a copying machine.

  Conventionally, this type of image forming apparatus has a photoreceptor, and an electrostatic latent image is formed on the photoreceptor by exposure. The electrostatic latent image is developed with toner to form a visible toner image, and the toner image is transferred onto a medium to form an image. In such image formation, the photoreceptor needs to be uniformly charged prior to exposure. The image forming apparatus includes a charger for this purpose. As this charger, there are a non-contact type using a corona discharge phenomenon and a contact type using a spark discharge phenomenon in a minute gap. Contact-type chargers do not need to be equipped with an ozone exhaust mechanism, and are therefore mainstream in low-end image forming apparatuses.

  Some contact-type chargers use a charging roller that rotates with the photosensitive member as a charging member that contacts the photosensitive member. Since the charging roller is in contact with the photoconductor as an image carrier, the surface may be contaminated. This is because contaminants such as untransferred toner may pass through the cleaning and remain on the surface of the photosensitive member that comes into contact with the charging roller. As a result, when the surface of the charging roller is contaminated, the charged action is naturally inhibited at the contaminated portion. For this reason, the charging state of the photosensitive member becomes non-uniform, and density unevenness appears in the image. In order to prevent this, for example, in Patent Document 1, a cleaning roller is provided. By rotating the cleaning roller, which is a rotating body, in contact with the charging roller, the charging roller is kept clean without uneven cleaning.

JP 2008-39880 A

  However, in recent years, there is a tendency to expand the use of the charging method by the charging roller to a higher-grade model from the conventional low-end class limitation. As a result, the service life of the charging roller cleaning roller must also be extended. However, if the conventional cleaning roller is used as it is, deterioration of the cleaning effect cannot be avoided at the end of the life, and the above-described density unevenness appears. For this reason, the substantial life is limited by the capability of the cleaning roller. Of course, the cleaning effect decreases because of the accumulation of contaminants on the cleaning roller. In addition to the charging roller, the image forming apparatus includes a rotating member (photosensitive member, intermediate transfer member, etc.) that contacts the toner, and the same problem occurs when these are cleaned by the roller.

  The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems of the prior art. That is, an object of the present invention is to provide an image forming apparatus provided with a cleaning roller that hardly accumulates contaminants and has sufficient durability.

  The image forming apparatus of the present invention, which has been made for the purpose of solving this problem, is an apparatus for forming a toner image on a medium using a rotating body, and rotates with the rotating body while contacting the rotating body. It has a cleaning roller for cleaning, and the cleaning roller is made of a foam material, and the opening shape of the foam cell opened on the surface differs depending on the circumferential position around the axis.

  In this image forming apparatus, the opening shape of the foam cell in the foam material (hereinafter referred to as foam) of the cleaning roller is anisotropic. For this reason, the compressibility of the foam is anisotropic, and the cleaning roller vibrates slightly with rotation. As a result, accumulation of contaminants in the foam is suppressed, and the cleaning ability of the cleaning roller is maintained over a long period of time.

  Here, the foam constituting the cleaning roller has an orientation in which the foam cells have an elongated shape and the longitudinal directions thereof are aligned with each other, and the orientation direction of the foam cells intersects the axial direction of the cleaning roller. It is desirable to arrange so that. Depending on the orientation of the foam cells, the anisotropy of the opening shape and the compressive anisotropy appear.

  Further, the orientation foam may be divided into a plurality of divided pieces by a circumferential position around the axis, and the foamed cells may be arranged so that the orientation directions of the foam cells are different depending on the divided pieces. Even with such a configuration, an opening shape and compressive anisotropy can be realized.

  Furthermore, it is desirable that both the diameter of the cleaning roller and the diameter of the rotating body are non-integer multiples of the other. If it does in this way, by the continuation of rotation of a cleaning roller and a rotary body, all the locations of the surface of a rotary body will be cleaned by the location of various opening shapes on the surface of a cleaning roller. This is because the cleaning is surely performed regardless of the size of the contaminant.

  The image forming apparatus according to the present invention includes a photoconductor on which an electrostatic latent image is formed, a charger for charging the photoconductor, an exposure unit for exposing the photoconductor, and toner on the electrostatic latent image on the photoconductor. It is desirable to have at least a developing unit that forms a toner image and a transfer unit that transfers the toner image on the photosensitive member to a medium. In this case, the rotating body to be cleaned by the cleaning roller is a charger or a photoreceptor. In the case where the charger is the rotating body, the charger rotates with the photosensitive member while being in contact with the photosensitive member to charge the photosensitive member.

  Alternatively, the image forming apparatus of the present invention includes at least a photosensitive member, a charger, an exposure device, a developing device, and an intermediate transfer member that receives the transfer of the toner image from the photosensitive member and transfers the toner image to a medium. It may be a thing. In this case, the rotating body to be cleaned by the cleaning roller is a charger, a photoreceptor, or an intermediate transfer body.

  According to the present invention, there is provided an image forming apparatus provided with a cleaning roller that hardly accumulates contaminants and has sufficient durability performance.

1 is an external perspective view showing an image forming apparatus according to an embodiment. It is a conceptual diagram which shows the element inside an image formation part. It is sectional drawing of a cleaning roller (example using a single foam foam material). It is a perspective view which shows the structure of an oriented foam material. It is sectional drawing of a cleaning roller (example using a continuous foam foam material). It is an expanded view which shows the opening shape of the foam cell in the surface of a cleaning roller. It is sectional drawing which shows the condition where the part of the opening of a small area is contacting the charging roller. It is sectional drawing which shows the condition where the part of the opening of a large area is contacting the charging roller. It is sectional drawing which shows the condition where the part of the opening of a small area is contacting the charging roller. It is sectional drawing which shows the condition where the part of the opening of a large area is contacting the charging roller. It is a graph which shows the change with time of the amount of biting of a cleaning roller. It is a graph which shows the change by the time of the compression rate of a cleaning roller. It is a graph which shows the pollution improvement condition by rotation of a cleaning roller. It is sectional drawing of the cleaning roller of a modification. It is sectional drawing of the cleaning roller of a modification.

  DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiments embodying the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the present embodiment, the present invention is embodied in an image forming apparatus as shown in FIG. An image forming apparatus 100 in FIG. 1 includes a paper feeding unit 1, an image forming unit 2, a paper discharge unit 3, and a reading unit 4. The paper feeding unit 1 is a part that stores paper to be provided to the image forming unit 2. The image forming unit 2 has a built-in photosensitive drum, which will be described later, and is a part that forms an image with toner on a sheet. The paper discharge unit 3 is a place where the paper on which the image is formed by the image forming unit 2 is discharged. The reading unit 4 is a part that reads an image of a document.

  The image forming unit 2 of the image forming apparatus 100 incorporates various elements necessary for image formation as shown in FIG. Inside the image forming unit 2, a photosensitive drum 10, a charging roller 20, an exposure device 30, a developing device 40, a transfer roller 50, and a cleaner 60 are arranged. As a result, the surface of the photosensitive drum 10 is first charged to a predetermined potential by the charging roller 20, an electrostatic latent image is written thereon by the exposure device 30, and the electrostatic latent image is developed by the developing device 40 to form a toner image. The toner image is transferred onto the paper P by the transfer roller 50.

  The paper P is then discharged to the paper discharge unit 3 after the toner image is fixed. After the transfer, the surface of the photosensitive drum 10 is charged with the charging roller 20 again after the transfer residual toner is removed by the cleaner 60. Note that FIG. 2 merely schematically shows the basic principle of image formation in the image forming apparatus 100, and does not show the exact positional relationship between these elements. Further, an apparatus configuration in which “P” in FIG. 2 is an intermediate transfer belt is also possible.

  In the image forming apparatus 100, as shown in FIG. 2, the charging roller 20 includes a cleaning roller 70. Of course, the cleaning roller 70 cleans the surface of the charging roller 20. The reason why the cleaning roller 70 is necessary is to prevent contamination of the surface of the charging roller 20. The position where the charging roller 20 is in contact with the surface of the photosensitive drum 10 is the position where the cleaning by the cleaner 60 is performed. However, this is because the transfer residual toner, the external additive material, the paper powder, and other contaminants that have passed through the cleaner 60 are not completely free. Therefore, since the charging roller 20 is also contaminated, the cleaning roller 70 cleans it. The charging roller 20 has a diameter R1, and the cleaning roller 70 has a diameter R2.

Between the diameter R1 of the charging roller 20 and the diameter R2 of the cleaning roller 70, there is a relationship that one is not an integral multiple of the other. That is, if n is an arbitrary natural number,
R1 ≠ n * R2
R2 ≠ n * R1
Both of these expressions hold. Specifically, R1 may not be within a range of ± 0.05 with respect to an integral multiple of R2, and R1 may not be within a range of ± 0.05 with respect to an integral multiple of R2. For this reason, the same portion of the surface of the charging roller 20 and the surface of the cleaning roller 70 do not face each other. By continuing the rotation of the charging roller 20 and the cleaning roller 70, all portions on the surface of the charging roller 20 are cleaned at various locations on the surface of the cleaning roller 70.

  The cleaning roller 70 has a core 71 and a cylindrical foam 72 around it as shown in FIG. The cylindrical foam 72 has a cylindrical shape as a whole and is formed of a foam material having a large number of foam cells (bubbles) 73 therein. Each foam cell 73 has a long shape, not a spherical shape. Furthermore, there is orientation in the direction of each foam cell 73. That is, the longitudinal direction of each foam cell 73 is aligned. The longitudinal direction of each foam cell 73 is not parallel to the direction of the core material 71. The longitudinal direction of each foamed cell 73 in FIG. 3 is a direction perpendicular to the direction of the core material 71 and is the longitudinal direction in the figure.

  FIG. 4 is a perspective view of the foam material cut into a rectangular parallelepiped shape. In the foamed material of FIG. 4, the longitudinal direction of each foamed cell 73 is oriented in the vertical direction in the figure. In this foam material, the opening shape of the foam cell 73 differs between a plane (A surface in the figure) perpendicular to the orientation direction of the foam cell 73 and a plane (B surface and C surface in the figure). On the A side, the foamed cells 73 are opened in a substantially circular shape, whereas in the B and C sides, they are opened in an oval shape that is long in the vertical direction. Here, the aspect ratio in the shape of the foamed cell 73 is defined by the major axis of the cell / the minor axis of the cell. Then, in the case of the foam of FIG. 4, the aspect ratio is about 2.8 to 3.2.

  Examples of the foam material as described above include “EMM” manufactured by Inoac Corporation. The base material resin of the foam material is polyurethane, but is not limited to polyurethane, and may be other resin such as melamine resin. The cleaning roller 70 shown in FIG. 3 uses a foam material having a single-bubble structure, but a foam material having an open-cell structure may be used as shown in FIG. When a foam material having a continuous foam structure is used, the cleaning effect described later is higher.

  The cleaning roller 70 uses an oriented foam material as described above. That is, the foamed material of FIG. 4 is cut out into a cylindrical shape as indicated by a one-dot chain line D, and this is used as a cylindrical foam 72. The cylindrical foam 72 is assembled to the core 71 to form a cleaning roller 70. The cleaning roller 70 can remove contamination on the surface of the charging roller 20 by opening the cylindrical foam 72 to the surface of the foam cell 73.

  For this reason, in the cleaning roller 70, the opening shape of the foam cell 73 differs depending on the orientation around the core material 71. That is, on the surface of the cleaning roller 70 at the vertical position (Y) in FIG. 3, the foam cell 73 is opened in a substantially circular shape like the A surface in FIG. 4. On the other hand, on the surface in the left-right direction position (X), the foamed cells 73 are opened in an oval shape like the B and C surfaces in FIG. The longitudinal direction of the oval is parallel to the circumferential direction of the cylindrical foam 72. This situation is shown in FIG. FIG. 6 is a part of a development view of the surface of the cylindrical foam 72. The left-right direction in FIG. 6 corresponds to the axial direction (width direction) of the cleaning roller 70, and the up-down direction corresponds to the circumferential direction. In FIG. 6, the opening of the foam cell 73 appears in an oval shape at the X position, and the opening of the foam cell 73 appears in a substantially circular shape at the Y position. As for the opening area, the oval opening at the X position is larger than the circular opening at the Y position.

  Further, the aspect ratio of the shape of the opening of the foam cell 73 can be considered. The aspect ratio of the opening is about 2.8 to 3.2 at the X position in FIG. 6, similar to the aspect ratio of the foam cell 73 itself. On the other hand, the aspect ratio of the opening at the Y position is almost 1. Thus, in the cleaning roller 70, there is a difference of about 1.8 to 2.2 between the maximum value and the minimum value of the aspect ratio of the opening. This difference is the change amount Δ of the aspect ratio of the opening at the position in contact with the charging roller 20 when the cleaning roller 70 is rotated. A numerical value obtained by dividing the amount of change Δ by the maximum value of the aspect ratio is the change rate Q.

  The cleaning roller 70 has the following two effects due to the orientation of the foam cell 73 of the cylindrical foam 72 described above. First, the first effect is that the charging effect on the charging roller 20 is high. The reason is that the opening area of the foaming cell 73 at the portion in contact with the charging roller 20 changes periodically with the rotation of the cleaning roller 70. That is, a situation where the part where the foaming cell 73 is opened in contact with the charging roller 20 (FIG. 7) and a situation where the part where the foaming cell 73 is opened in the elliptical shape contact the charging roller 20 (FIG. 7). And 8) are repeated alternately. That is, the aspect ratio change rate Q is large. The size of the contaminant on the surface of the charging roller 20 varies. This is because there are several types of contaminants as described above, and there can be relatively large particles such as agglomerated toner.

  Here, in the situation where the surface of the charging roller 20 is cleaned with an opening having a small area as shown in FIG. 7, the small contaminant 21 is mainly removed from the charging roller 20. On the other hand, in the situation where the surface of the charging roller 20 is cleaned with an opening having a large area as shown in FIG. 8, the large contaminant 22 is mainly removed from the charging roller 20. Then, from the above-described relationship regarding the diameters of the charging roller 20 and the cleaning roller 70, each location on the surface of the charging roller 20 experiences both the situation of FIG. 7 and the situation of FIG. For this reason, by continuing the rotation of the charging roller 20 and the cleaning roller 70, both the small-sized contaminant 21 and the large-sized contaminant 22 are removed at all locations on the surface of the charging roller 20. For this reason, the cleaning effect on the charging roller 20 is high due to the large change ratio Q of the aspect ratio.

  A second effect of the orientation of the foam cell 73 is that contaminants are difficult to accumulate on the cleaning roller 70 itself. As described above, the cleaning roller 70 cleans the charging roller 20 by scraping off contaminants through the opening of the foam cell 73 of the cylindrical foam 72. For this reason, the polluted contaminants may accumulate in the foam cell 73 of the cylindrical foam 72. When the amount of contaminants accumulated in the foam cell 73 is increased in this way, the cleaning effect of the cleaning roller 70 is degraded.

  However, in this embodiment, due to the orientation of the cylindrical foam 72, contaminants are less likely to accumulate in the foam cell 73. For this reason, the cleaning effect of the cleaning roller 70 decreases slowly and is suitable for durable use.

  The reason is as follows. The cylindrical foam 72 having orientation in the arrangement of the foam cells 73 has anisotropy in the compressibility in the radial direction due to the orientation. That is, in the case of compressing in the direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of the foamed cell 73 (XX direction in FIG. 3) and in the case of compressing in the direction parallel to the longitudinal direction (YY direction in FIG. 3). The hardness is different. It is softer when compressing in the direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction. Further, the core 71 that supports the cleaning roller 70 is not a perfect rigid body.

  Therefore, when the cylindrical foam 72 shown in FIG. 9 is compressed by the charging roller 20 in a direction parallel to the longitudinal direction of the foam cell 73 (corresponding to FIG. 7), the cylindrical foam 72 shown in FIG. The amount of biting of the charging roller 20 into the cylindrical foam 72 is slightly different when compressed by the charging roller 20 in a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of the foam cell 73 (corresponding to FIG. 8). In the situation of FIG. 9, the cylindrical foam 72 is more difficult to compress than the situation of FIG.

  For this reason, as the charging roller 20 and the cleaning roller 70 continue to rotate, the amount of biting of the cleaning roller 70 periodically changes as shown in the graph of FIG. Similarly, as shown in the graph of FIG. 12, the compression rate of the cylindrical foam 72 also changes periodically. Therefore, the cleaning roller 70 always vibrates minutely during rotation. In the case of the cleaning roller 70 shown in FIG. 3, the vibration cycle is twice the rotation cycle. Due to this vibration, there is an effect that contaminants accumulated in the opening of the foam cell 73 are ejected. For this reason, contaminants hardly accumulate on the cleaning roller 70 of this embodiment.

  Here, the results of tests conducted by the present inventors to confirm the effectiveness of the present invention will be described. As test specimens of this test, two types of cleaning foam 70 (hereinafter, referred to as an example) and a cleaning roller according to a comparative example shown in FIG. 5 were used. The cleaning roller of the comparative example is prepared so that the longitudinal direction of the foam cell 73 is parallel to the axial direction of the roller while using the same material as that of the embodiment as the material of the cylindrical foam. Therefore, the cleaning roller of the comparative example has no anisotropy of the compressibility and does not generate vibration even when rotated. Other conditions regarding the test were as follows. As described above, the change rate Q of the aspect ratio is large in the embodiment, whereas the change rate Q is small in the comparative example.

Examples Comparative Example Charging roller diameter 9.5 mm 9.5 mm
Cleaning roller core diameter 4mm 4mm
Total diameter of cleaning roller 8mm 8mm
Angle between cell longitudinal direction and axial direction 90 ° 0 °
Foam Material Urethane Urethane Cleaning Roller Followed Followed Aspect Ratio of Opening 1-3.2 2.8-3.2
Δ 2.2 0.4
Q 69% 13%

  Here, as this test, two tests were performed: a test for confirming the cleaning effect of the cleaning roller 70 due to vibration and a test for sustainability of the cleaning ability of the cleaning roller 70. First, the results of a test for confirming the cleaning effect of the cleaning roller 70 due to vibration will be described. This test was performed by preliminarily contaminating the cleaning roller 70 and observing the degree of reduction in contamination when the cleaning roller 70 was rotated while being in contact with a roller equivalent to the charging roller 20.

  The test results are shown in FIG. In the graph of FIG. 13, the horizontal axis indicates the cumulative number of rotations from the start of the test of the charging roller 20, and the vertical axis indicates the amount of improvement in the cleaning roller contamination, that is, the amount of decrease in the amount of accumulated contaminants. is there. The larger the value on the vertical axis, the greater the amount of pollutant reduction, that is, the greater the cleaning effect. When FIG. 13 is seen, the amount of contamination improvement of the cleaning roller 70 of this embodiment is clearly exceeding that of the comparative example.

  Next, the result of the durability test of the cleaning ability of the cleaning roller 70 will be described. This test was conducted by an endurance use test with an actual machine. As a testing machine, a Konica Minolta-made magiccolor 5550 type machine was used, and the imaging unit was modified to attach the cleaning roller of the example or the comparative example to the test. The cleaning ability was evaluated by visually checking the degree of contamination of the image obtained by printing and the degree of contamination of the charging roller. If it was satisfactory, it was rated as “◯”, and if it looked closely, it was marked as “Δ” if the degree of contamination was obvious, and “x” if it was apparent at first glance. The results are shown in Table 1. From this result, it can be seen that the example maintains better cleaning ability over the number of printed sheets than the comparative example.

  As described in detail above, according to the present embodiment, the cleaning roller 70 that cleans the charging roller 20 includes the one using the cylindrical foam 72 of the foam material. And as the foam material, the thing of the orientation which has the elongate foam cell 73 and the longitudinal direction aligned is used. Further, the longitudinal direction of the foam cell 73 in the foam material is set to a direction not parallel to the direction of the core material 71 of the cleaning roller 70. For this reason, the compressibility of the cleaning roller 70 varies depending on the orientation around the core 71. Accordingly, when the cleaning roller 70 rotates, the cleaning roller 70 is vibrated slightly to suppress the accumulation of contaminants on the cleaning roller 70. In this way, an image forming apparatus including the cleaning roller 70 that is unlikely to accumulate contaminants and has sufficient durability performance is realized.

  Further, the opening shape of the foam cell 73 varies depending on the orientation around the core material 71 due to the orientation of the foam material. That is, the aspect ratio change rate Q is large. Further, neither the diameter of the charging roller 20 nor the diameter of the cleaning roller 70 is set to be an integral multiple of the other. As a result, all portions of the surface of the charging roller 20 are cleaned at various points on the surface of the cleaning roller 70 by continuing the rotation. This ensures that both large-diameter contaminants and small-diameter contaminants are removed from the charging roller 20. Thus, the cleaning property itself of the charging roller 20 is also improved.

  Note that this embodiment is merely an example, and does not limit the present invention. Therefore, the present invention can naturally be improved and modified in various ways without departing from the gist thereof. For example, the specific structure of the cleaning roller 70 is not limited to the one in which the cylindrical foam 72 is integrated as a whole as shown in FIG. 3 or FIG. As shown in FIG. 14 or FIG. 15, the cylindrical foam may be divided.

  FIG. 14 shows a cleaning roller 74 in which a cylindrical foam is divided into four parts. That is, as a whole, the four divided pieces 75, 76, 77, 78 are combined to form a cylindrical shape. Each of the divided pieces itself is formed of an oriented foam material as shown in FIG. However, in the divided pieces 75 and 77, the longitudinal direction of the foamed cell 73 intersects the direction of the core material 71 as in the case of the cleaning roller 70 described above. In the remaining divided pieces 76 and 78, the longitudinal direction of the foam cell 73 is parallel to the direction of the core material 71. The divided pieces 76 and 78 may be made of an isotropic foam material having no orientation. In the cleaning roller 74, the divided pieces 75 and 77 and the divided pieces 76 and 78 are alternately arranged. Even if it is such, the same effect as the case of the above-mentioned cleaning roller 70 is exhibited.

  The arrangement in the orientation direction of the divided pieces is not limited to that shown in FIG. It may be as shown in FIG. The number of divided pieces is not limited to “4”. Even when the cylindrical foam has a divided configuration, the foam structure may be either a single bubble (FIG. 3) or a continuous bubble (FIG. 5), or a mixture of both.

  Further, the cleaning object to be cleaned by the cleaning roller 70 is not limited to the charging roller 20. There may be an image forming apparatus in which the cleaning roller 70 is configured to clean other rotating bodies. The image forming apparatus can also be configured so that the photosensitive drum 10 is an object to be cleaned by the cleaning roller 70. In addition, the image forming apparatus can be configured so that the intermediate transfer belt is a cleaning object of the cleaning roller 70. Further, the image forming apparatus to which the present invention is applied may not have the reading unit 4, or may acquire a print job from outside the apparatus such as a public line and form an image.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Photosensitive drum 20 Charging roller 70 Cleaning roller 71 Core material 72 Cylindrical foam 73 Foaming cell 74 Cleaning roller 75-78 Split piece 100 Image forming apparatus P Paper or intermediate transfer belt R1 Charging roller diameter R2 Cleaning roller diameter

Claims (6)

In an image forming apparatus that forms a toner image on a medium using a rotating body,
A cleaning roller that rotates with the rotating body while cleaning the rotating body while contacting the rotating body;
The cleaning roller is
It is made of foam material,
An image forming apparatus, wherein an opening shape of a foam cell opened on a surface varies depending on a circumferential position around an axis. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1,
The foam material constituting the cleaning roller is:
The foam cell has an elongated shape and the orientation is such that its longitudinal direction is aligned with each other,
An image forming apparatus, wherein the orientation direction of the foam cells is arranged so as to intersect with the axial direction of the cleaning roller. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1,
The foam material constituting the cleaning roller is:
The foam cell has an elongated shape and the orientation is such that its longitudinal direction is aligned with each other,
An image forming apparatus, wherein the image forming apparatus is divided into a plurality of divided pieces according to a circumferential position around an axis, and the orientation direction of the foamed cells differs depending on the divided pieces. In the image forming apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 3,
An image forming apparatus, wherein both the diameter of the cleaning roller and the diameter of the rotating body are non-integer multiples of the other. The image forming apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein:
A photoreceptor on which an electrostatic latent image is formed;
A charger for charging the photoreceptor;
An exposure device for exposing the photoreceptor;
A developing device that applies toner to the electrostatic latent image of the photoreceptor to form a toner image;
And at least a transfer device for transferring the toner image of the photoreceptor to a medium,
The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the rotating body is the charger or the photoconductor. The image forming apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein:
A photoreceptor on which an electrostatic latent image is formed;
A charger for charging the photoreceptor;
An exposure device for exposing the photoreceptor;
A developing device that applies toner to the electrostatic latent image of the photoreceptor to form a toner image;
An intermediate transfer member that receives the transfer of the toner image from the photosensitive member and transfers the toner image to a medium;
The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the rotating member is the charger, the photosensitive member, or the intermediate transfer member.

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