JPH0561390A - Cleaning device for image forming device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prevent the leakage of toner from the defective part of a sealing member by extending and forming an end part sealing member arranged in a gap part between a cleaning device and the surface of an image carrier, further outside than the sidewall of the cleaning device. CONSTITUTION:The sealing member 2 stuck to the end edge C1 of the cleaning device extends outward over the side surface CE of a casing, and reaches the end part of the image carrier coated with an OPC photosensitive body extending further outside than the side surface CE of the casing of the cleaning device, to supply toner. Thus, even if there are some defects of contact between the sealing member 2 and the image carrier, whole of the toner is captured by a wide sealing member, and the toner is prevented from going our further up to the outside. On the other hand, since the sealing member 2 is projected on both sides of the sticking part of the casing end edge C1, the torque on both sides of the sticking part caused by friction from an image carrier side is offset, to obtain stabilization, and the turning up and peeling of the sealing member 2 can be prevented.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

[Object of the Invention]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus utilizing an electrostatic transfer process, such as an electrostatic copying machine and a printer.
Above all, it relates to the cleaning device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a known image forming apparatus, which repeats the step of electrostatically transferring a transferable toner image formed on the surface of a running image carrier to a transfer material such as paper,
It is necessary to sufficiently clean the residual toner remaining on the image carrier without contributing to the transfer at each transfer, and as a cleaning means therefor, a cleaning blade made of an elastic material such as rubber removes the residual toner. Widely used.

In such a cleaning means, an opening of a cleaning device casing arranged in the vicinity of the image carrier is opposed to the image carrier, and the cleaning device is attached to the opening and is generally orthogonal to the traveling direction of the image carrier. One edge of the edge of the cleaning blade thus arranged is brought into contact with the image carrier to scrape off the residual toner, and the toner is guided into the cleaning device by the rake sheet provided in the opening. Usually there is.

With this structure, the gap between the surface of the image carrier and the opening of the cleaning device is sealed by the blade and the scooping sheet in the direction orthogonal to the running direction of the image carrier of the casing opening. I can, but
Since it is not possible to close the gap on both ends of the cleaning blade in the longitudinal direction, it is necessary to provide a separate sealing means.

FIGS. 3 and 4 show such an end sealing means, and the drawings show only the structure near one end of the cleaning blade.

The image carrier 3 is on the front side of the paper,
The opening CO of the casing is opposed to this,
One edge 5a of one edge of the cleaning blade 5 integrally fixed to the sheet metal 6 attached to the edge of the opening is in contact with the surface of the image carrier (not shown). In addition, as shown in FIG. 4, a scooping sheet 8 made of a sheet of polyethylene terephthalate or the like attached to a sheet metal 9 attached to the cleaning blade 5 is disposed at the edge of the opening facing the cleaning blade 5, and the image bearing is performed. It contacts the body and guides the scraped toner into the cleaning device.

Of the edges of the opening facing the image bearing member, only one of the edges C1 is shown in the figure, and the edges on both ends in the longitudinal direction of the cleaning blade 5 are made of a rigid casing. Therefore, it is unavoidable to provide a slight gap between the edge C1 and the surface of the image carrier, and it is necessary to prevent the toner from leaking from this part.

As an end seal for this purpose, a sealing material 1 made of maltoprene or the like is attached to the opening edge C1 of the cleaning device casing in a state of being in contact with the side surface of the blade 5 and the surface of the image carrier outside the image area. Then, there has already been proposed a structure configured to prevent the toner scraped off by the cleaning blade and the toner laterally running along the blade edge 5a from leaking out.

However, with the above-mentioned sealing mechanism, it is practically difficult to completely seal between the surface of the image bearing member and the end sealing material, and the particle size of the toner gradually decreases in order to obtain a high quality image. This is especially true in the present situation where the size is getting smaller.

The case of an image carrier using an OPC photosensitive member, which has been increasingly used recently, will be described with reference to FIG. 5, which is a schematic perspective view showing such an image carrier 50. In the figure, an organic photoconductor layer 53 is formed by coating on the surface of a base body made of an aluminum cylinder. From the manufacturing process, such an image carrier is
Due to the coating equipment, the aluminum base metal is exposed at the portion indicated by the reference numeral 52 at the right end in the figure, and the photosensitive layer is uniformly formed by coating up to the left end. The surface of the portion corresponding to the image area in the center of the image carrier is designed to maintain the flatness as high as possible, but the portions corresponding to the non-image areas at both ends are not considered in this way. ..

By the way, when the above-mentioned end seal member is disposed in contact with the image carrier having such a structure,
The seal member is, as shown by reference numerals 54 and 55 in FIG.
In the non-image area near the edge of the image bearing member, that is, because it comes into contact with a position where the surface is not flat enough or the aluminum metal portion, the adhesion between the sealing member and the surface of the image bearing member is naturally reduced. It becomes worse and causes leakage of toner.

The present invention has been made in order to cope with the above situation, and eliminates the above-mentioned defects of the seal members arranged on both ends of the cleaning blade in the longitudinal direction. It is an object of the present invention to provide a cleaning device which can prevent the toner leakage and can always obtain a good sealing action.

[0013]

[Constitution of the invention]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention has an image carrier and an opening which is disposed in the vicinity of the image carrier and faces the image carrier. An image having a cleaning member attached to one edge of the cleaning member for contacting with the image carrier to remove residual toner, and an end sealing material contacting the side of the cleaning member and the surface of the image carrier. In the cleaning device of the forming device,
It is characterized in that the end sealing material is extended outside the casing of the cleaning device while being in contact with the surface of the image carrier.

With this structure, it is possible to reliably carry out the leakage of the toner from the side of the cleaning device with an extremely simple structure.

[0015]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS "FIG. 1" is a perspective view of an essential part of a cleaning device showing an embodiment of the present invention in the vicinity of one end of a cleaning blade, and "FIG. 2" is a front view thereof. Portions corresponding to those shown in the above-mentioned "FIG. 3" and "FIG. 4" are denoted by the same reference numerals, and description thereof will be omitted unless necessary.

In the illustrated apparatus, the seal member 2 attached to the end edge C1 of the casing of the cleaning device extends outward beyond the side surface CE of the casing, and is usually outside the side surface CE of the cleaning device casing. Extending to
The toner reaches the end of the image carrier coated with the PC photoconductor so that the toner can be supplemented. For this reason, even if there is some difficulty in the adhesion between the seal material and the image carrier, it is possible to effectively prevent the situation where the wide seal material is completely supplemented and further escapes to the outside. can do.

Further, since the sealing material is projected on both sides of the adhering portion of the casing end edge C1, as compared with the sealing material which is projected only on the inner side and the blade side as shown in FIG. Since the torques on both sides of the sticking site, which are received by friction from the carrier side, are offset and stabilized, it is also effective in preventing the seal material from turning over and peeling. Further, the end portion of the image carrier on which the seal material is pressed is not durable because the seal material wears if it is pressed too strongly due to the irregularity of the flatness of the photosensitive layer surface as described above and the exposure of the image carrier base material. However, according to the present invention, the initial action can be obtained by appropriately pressing the sealing material, which is also advantageous from this point.

Next, an experimental example of the present invention will be described. [Experimental Example 1] In a device using an OPC photosensitive member having a diameter of 30 mm, a 90 mesh urethane foam was used as an end sealing material of the cleaning device, and the casing edge of the cleaning device was bonded with a double-sided tape with a width of 3 mm to form a casing. I tried to stick out 3mm from the side. The urethane foam has a natural thickness of 3 mm, and the distance between the image carrier and the casing edge is set so that the urethane foam collapses by 1 mm when installed.

6000 sheets of paper were passed through the above apparatus using toner having an average particle diameter of 6 μm, but the toner leakage was extremely small and practically no problem.

[Experimental Example 2] As the end sealing material, a thickness of 2 was used.
A 1 mm-thick Excene (trade name) was attached to a urethane foam of mm, and a paper passing test was conducted under the same conditions as in the above-mentioned experimental example. The surface of Excene was dense, so toner leakage was further reduced. ..

As the image forming apparatus, an image carrier, a primary charging device, a developing device, a cleaning device, and other suitable number of image forming members are formed in an integrated cartridge, and the image forming device is detachably mounted on the image forming apparatus main body. That is configured to
Although widely used in the past, this type of cartridge usually moves the cartridge in the longitudinal direction of the cleaning blade of the cleaning device contained in the cartridge to attach / detach it. Although leakage is likely to occur, providing the sealing mechanism according to the present invention with such a structure is extremely effective in preventing toner leakage.

[0022]

As described above, the present invention can be performed at a low cost without the need for a special accessory mechanism, and in a cleaning device equipped with a cleaning blade, toner leaks from the longitudinal edge of the blade. It is possible to prevent the occurrence of the end sealant from being turned over and peeled off, so that it is possible to stably maintain a good cleaning function for a long period of time.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a main part of a cleaning device showing an embodiment of the present invention.

[Fig. 2] Same as above

FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a main part of a known cleaning device.

[Fig. 4] Same as above

FIG. 5 is a perspective view illustrating the configuration of a known OPC photosensitive member.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1, 2 Edge sealing material 3 Image carrier 5 Cleaning blade 8 Scooping sheet

Front page continuation (72) Inventor Masashi Ojima 3-30-2 Shimomaruko, Ota-ku, Tokyo Canon Inc. (72) Inventor Hiroshi Sasame 3-30-2 Shimomaruko, Ota-ku, Tokyo Canon Inc. In-house (72) Inventor Hiroshi Sato 3-30-2 Shimomaruko, Ota-ku, Tokyo Canon Inc.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An image carrier and an opening which is disposed in the vicinity of the image carrier and faces the image carrier. The image carrier is attached to one edge of the opening and abuts on the image carrier. In a cleaning device provided with a cleaning member for removing residual toner and an end sealing material that comes into contact with the side of the cleaning member and the surface of the image carrier, the end sealing material is provided outside the casing of the cleaning device. A cleaning device for an image forming apparatus, which extends while being in contact with the surface of a carrier.