JPH02302783A - Recovery device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To eliminate the offset arising when toner in a recovery container is recovered by providing a first feeding means which is provided near a cleaning means and rotates, and a second feeding means which rotates opposite to the first feeding means, engages with the first one and feeds the toner. CONSTITUTION:First of all, the toner is cleaned by the cleaning means 13 from the surface of a photosensitive drum 5. Next, the toner carried toward the recovery container 16 by the first feeding means 14 is held and carried by the feeding means 14 and the second feeding means 15 which rotates opposite to the rotating direction of the feeding means 14. Accordingly, the toner is carried towards the recovery container while being agitated. Even when the toner which passes by the feeding means 14 is offset in the direction of the printing width, the toner is carried uniformly after it passes by the feeding means 15. Thus, the toner is recovered uniformly in the recovery container 16.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a printing apparatus using an electrophotographic process, and particularly relates to cleaning and recovery of residual toner on an image carrier.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, in this type of recovery device, only the first feeding device is used to send the toner cleaned from the image carrier by the cleaning device to the toner recovery container.

[Problem that the invention attempts to solve]

However, with conventional technology, when high-density printing is performed that is partially offset in the printable width, the toner in the collection container is not collected uniformly but is collected in an offset state, resulting in poor volumetric efficiency. Furthermore, in the case where a detection means for detecting that a predetermined amount of toner has been collected in the collection container is provided, there is a major problem in that the detection means does not operate.

The present invention is intended to solve these problems, and its purpose is to prevent toner from being collected unevenly in the collection container even if high-density printing is performed that is partially uneven in the printable width. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a recovery device that has good volumetric efficiency and does not cause failures in detecting the amount of toner when it is full.

[Means to solve the problem]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention includes a cleaning means that comes into contact with the image carrier, a first feeding means that is provided near the cleaning means and rotates, and a rotating first feeding means that rotates in the opposite direction and engages with the first feeding means. and a second feeding means for feeding the toner.

[For production]

According to the above structure of the present invention, the toner sent toward the collection container by the first feeding means is held and conveyed by the first feeding means and the second feeding means that rotates in the opposite direction to the rotational direction of the first feeding means. By doing this, the toner is sent to the collection container while being stirred, so even if the toner passing through the first feeding means is uneven in the print width direction, it will be uneven after passing through the second feeding means. Therefore, the toner can be uniformly collected in the collection container.

〔Example〕

To explain the present invention based on the drawings, FIG. 1 is a main sectional view of a printing apparatus according to the present invention, which uses an electrophotographic process, in which recording paper 1 is fed from a paper feed tray 2 to a registration roller 4 by a paper feed roller 3. be done. Furthermore, registration roller 4
The sheet is sequentially conveyed to the photosensitive drum 5, which is an image carrier, the heat fixing device 6, and the paper discharge roller 7.8. At this time, information such as characters is optically written as an electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive drum 5 by a laser head 9 serving as a writing head. Next, toner adheres to the writing area on the photosensitive drum 5 from the developing device 10 to make the electrostatic latent image visible, and the toner is further transferred onto the recording paper 1 as a visible image by the transfer device 11. Furthermore, the toner image on the recording paper 1 is thermally fused and fixed by a thermal fixing device 6, thereby completing the printing operation. At this time, the photoreceptor drum 5
Since all the toner is not transferred onto the recording paper 1 from above and a small amount of toner remains on the photosensitive drum 5, it is common to provide a collection device to clean and collect the residual toner. In this embodiment, 12 is a recovery device.

FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of the collection device 12, in which 13 is a cleaning means made of an elastic member that comes into contact with the photoreceptor drum 5 to clean residual toner on the photoreceptor drum 5, and 14 has an irregular cross-sectional shape. 15 is a first feeding means with a deformed shaft rotating in the direction of arrow a; 15 is a second feeding means having a blade shape on the circumference; a stirring shaft which rotates in the direction of arrow a;
Reference numeral 6 denotes a collection container, and 17 a detection member for detecting when the collection container is almost full of collected toner, and together with a photo interrupter] 8 constitutes a detection means. Numeral 19 is a seal member disposed in close contact with the irregularly shaped shaft 14 to prevent the toner from being sent back to the photosensitive drum 5 side, and 20 is a seal member to prevent the toner from scattering outside the recovery device. Further, in this embodiment, the irregular shaft 14 uses a shaft with a regular hexagonal cross section, and the stirring shaft 15 uses a thin round material on the circumference of the round shaft 21 to form a blade shape 22, 23, 24 as shown in FIG. I used the one with .

Note that appropriate gaps are provided between the stirring shaft 15 and the irregularly shaped shaft 14, between the stirring shaft 15 and the sealing member 19, and between the stirring shaft 15 and the bottom surface of the collection container 16. If the gap is too small, the force of the stirring shaft 15 to feed the toner becomes too strong, reducing the stirring effect and increasing the rotational load of the stirring shaft 15.Furthermore, if the gap is too large (this However, there is a problem in that the force for sandwiching and conveying the toner between the stirring shaft 15 and the irregularly shaped shaft 14 becomes small.

Therefore, in this example, the optimum gap was about 1 to 31 to obtain good results.

Next, to explain the movement of the toner, the cleaning means 13
The toner cleaned from the top of the photoreceptor drum 5 is sent to the stirring shaft 15 side along the sealing member 20 by the rotation of the irregularly shaped shaft 14 in the direction a.

Next, a part of the toner that has reached the stirring shaft 15 passes through the gap between the stirring shaft 15 and the bottom of the collection container 16 and is sent in the direction of arrow C, but after a certain amount has accumulated on the bottom of the collection container 16, it is stirred. The rotation of the shaft 15 in the direction of the arrow A and the rotation of the irregularly shaped shaft 14 in the direction of the arrow a causes the material to be held and conveyed in the direction of the arrow d. At this time, since an appropriate gap is formed between the stirring shaft 15 and the irregularly shaped shaft 14 and the sealing member 19 as described above, the toner sent in the direction of arrow d is also stirred and conveyed in the axial direction of the stirring shaft 15. Even if the toner on the photosensitive drum 5 is uneven, the toner can always be collected in a flat state in the collection container 16.

Further, after a predetermined amount of toner is collected in the collection container 16, the detection member 17 is pressed by the collected toner, and the photo interrupter 18 is activated, thereby detecting that the toner in the collection container 16 is full. As mentioned above, since toner collection can always be performed without deviation, toner full detection can be performed accurately.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, according to the present invention, the toner collected in the collection container 1-6 is collected while being stirred, so that high-density printing, etc., which is partially offset in the width direction of the recording paper 1, is performed. Even if the toner is collected in the collection container 16 unevenly, it is possible to provide an extremely reliable collection device with good volumetric efficiency and no failure in detecting the amount of toner full.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a main sectional view of a printing device incorporating an embodiment of the collection device of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a sectional view of the collection device. FIG. 3 is a perspective view of the stirring shaft. 5... Photosensitive drum 12... Recovery device 13... Cleaning means 14... Irregular shaft 15... Stirring shaft 16... Recovery container 17... Detection member 18... Photo interrupter 19・φ・Seal member 20...Seal member or more

Claims (1)

[Claims] In an apparatus for cleaning and collecting toner on an image carrier, a cleaning means contacts the image carrier, a first feeding means is provided near the cleaning means and rotates, and the first feeding means rotates in the opposite direction to the first feeding means. A collection device comprising: a second feeding means that engages with the second feeding means to feed the toner.