JPS59101690A - Toner collecting type blade cleaning device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To omit a residual toner receiving vessel for receiving a dropped residual toner by leaving a residual toner scraped with a cleaning blade under the care of a charge holding body by an action of a rotating roller provided on the upstream side of the cleaning blade, and collecting it automatically to a toner developing device. CONSTITUTION:When a cleaning blade 23 is rotated to a position of a full line from a dotted line due to the end of copying, etc. and is separated from a photosensitive drum 1, a part 25 of a residual toner 19 scraped and accumulated by the blade 23 becomes like a lump and slips down along the surface of the photosensitive drum 1, but it is received in the shape placed between the adjacent surface parts of the photosensitive drum 1 and a rotating roller 24, and does not leak to the upstream side since the rotating roller 24 is driven and rotated in the direction as indicated with an arrow. On the other hand, if a parting property elastic base material such as urethane rubber, etc. is used as the rotating roller 24, the dropped toner 25 does not adhere to the rotating roller 24 but is carried, and at this time point, the blade 23 is separated from the photosensitive drum 1, therefore, all residual toners 19, 25 reach a toner developing device 8.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides a method for collecting toner collected during blade cleaning of residual toner after transfer on a four-load holder in an electrophotographic device, etc., into a toner developing device by using the four-load holder. This invention relates to a toner recovery type blade cleaning device.

In a conventional electrophotographic apparatus, a photoreceptor drum, for example, is used as a charge carrier, and an image corresponding to the original image is formed on the photoreceptor drum, and this is developed with toner by a developing device using a dry developer. This toner image is then transferred to copy paper and inspected to obtain a copy image. In this case, since toner remaining after transfer remains on the photoreceptor drum, it is necessary to clean the residual toner before forming the next magnetostatic latent image.

The applicant uses 14i! in contact with the photoreceptor drum as a cleaning means. Using a cleaning blade formed so that it can contact the photoreceptor drum, the residual toner is collected in agglomerated form, and when copying is completed, the cleaning blade is separated from the photoreceptor drum and is placed on the photoreceptor drum as described above. He proposed a method for collecting toner in which toner was transported to the developing device and taken into the developing device, and filed a patent application in Japanese Patent Application No. 7181111/1983.

Although the patent-pending toner recovery method has several excellent features, it is difficult to directly collect all of the residual toner collected in the form of agglomerates into the developing device. However, there are problems such as the need to provide a toner collection container to receive residual toner.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a general configuration example of an electrophotographic apparatus to which the toner recovery method related to the above-mentioned patent application is applied. rotates in the direction of the arrow at the start of the copying operation, and after the residual charge is erased by uniform exposure by the core lamp 2, it is uniformly charged by the corona charger 3. The document to be copied is placed on the movable document table 4 and starts moving in the direction of the arrow, and is illuminated by the illumination lamp 5 and reflector 6.
, the original image is projected onto the photosensitive drum lJ: , via the SELFOC lens 7, and this! An electrostatic latent image corresponding to the original image is formed on the photosensitive drum 1. This electrostatic latent image is formed on a magnetic roller 9 of a toner developing device 8 using a dry developer.
This toner image is superimposed on the copy paper previously sent out from the copy paper cassette 10 by the pickup roller 11 and paper feed roller 12, and is transferred to the copy paper by the action of the transfer corona charger 13. Ru. This copy paper is corona charged for peeling.
After being peeled off from the photosensitive drum 1 by the action of G14, the toner image is sent to the fixing roller 15, where the toner image is fixed, and then discharged to the copy tray 17 by the discharge roller 16.

As a cleaning means, a transfer corona charger 13 and a peeling corona charger c are used around the photosensitive drum l.
Part of the toner image transfer 'lF where i14 is arranged and the removal lamp 2
A cleaning blade 18'2 made of an elastic material such as urethane and formed to be capable of coming into contact with and separating from the photoreceptor drum 1 is disposed between the photosensitive drum 1 and the cleaning blade 18'2, which is activated by a copy start signal indicating the start of a copying operation. The cleaning blade 18 is brought into contact with the photoreceptor drum 1 to scrape up the residual toner on the photoreceptor drum 1, and in response to a copy end signal, the cleaning blade 18 is separated from the photoreceptor drum 1, and the residual toner 19 that has been scraped into agglomerated form is directly exposed to the photoreceptor. The toner is placed on a body drum, conveyed to a toner developing device 8, and then transferred to a magnetic roller 9.
The residual toner conveyed by the magnetic brush formed by the developer on the top is rubbed and collected into the toner developing device 8 .

However, when the cleaning blade 18 is separated from the photoreceptor drum 1 at the end of copying in the above-mentioned copying, or when the cleaning blade 18 vibrates greatly for some reason, the cleaning action of the cleaning blade 18 causes the second As shown in the figure, in the direction of rotation of the photoreceptor drum l of the cleaning blade [8], a portion of the residual toner 19 that has been scraped up and deposited on the dirt side of the photoreceptor drum 1 is M' 7M with respect to the photoreceptor drum 1. The falling blade due to gravity becomes larger,
It often happens that the particles fall along the surface of the photoreceptor drum 1.

Therefore, in the conventional method, as shown in the figure, it is necessary to provide a container 22 upstream of the cleaning blade 18 for a toner receiver including two loaves of sheet-like elastic members for receiving the residual toner 20 that falls. Therefore, not only is the structure complicated, but the toner receiver also requires a space for mounting the container 22, and the toner receiver must individually discharge the toner accumulated in the container 22 one by one.

An object of the present invention is to provide a toner recovery system in which all of the residual toner scraped up by the cleaning blade is entrusted to a heavy holder and collected in a toner cleaning device, in order to solve the above-mentioned problem of waste distribution in the blade cleaning device. The present invention aims to provide a blade cleaning device.

The toner recovery type blade cleaning device of the present invention includes a cleaning blade that is provided in contact with an endless four-load holder that rotates along a predetermined path, and a cleaning blade that is provided in contact with an endless four-load holder that rotates along a predetermined path, and a On the upstream side of the cleaning blade, there is a rotary roller that is in contact with the load holder and rotates at the same circumferential speed as the rotational speed of the charge holder. The rotating roller and the charge holder are stopped by the proximal surface thereof, and the residual toner that has not fallen is transferred to the charge holder, and when the cleaning blade is separated from the charge holder, the charge holder is removed. The times! The second feature is that the toner is transported to a toner developing device provided along the 11 passage.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram of the configuration of the main parts of the device of the present invention and its operation.

As shown in FIG. 1A, the device of the present invention rotates along a predetermined path in the same way as the cleaning blade 18 in the conventional device described in FIG. 1] Endless'
A cleaning blade 23 made of an elastic member such as urethane is provided so as to be able to come into contact with and separate from a charge carrier, for example, a photoreceptor drum l, and a cleaning blade 23 is provided on the upstream side of the cleaning blade 28 with respect to the rotating direction of the photoreceptor drum l. , and a rotating roller 24 configured to be in contact with the photosensitive drum 1 and rotate at a circumferential speed V equal to the rotational speed of the photosensitive drum 1.

In the illustrated embodiment, the rotary roller 24 is pressed against the photoreceptor drum 1 and driven to rotate, so that its circumferential speed becomes equal to the rotating speed of the photoreceptor drum 1.

And the same m A &1, cleaning blade 23
is in contact with the photoreceptor drum 1, and the cleaning operation is in progress for the area on the photoreceptor drum l that requires cleaning, and the rear end of the area that requires cleaning is at the position of the arrow l:I]X. It shows two things at the same time.

In this state, the cleaning blade 23 cleans the surface of the photoreceptor drum l as it rotates, and the residual toner 19 is removed from the cleaning blade 23.
It is gathered up and deposited in the form of agglomerates at the tip of the tube.

On the other hand, since the one-rotation roller 24 is configured to rotate following the photosensitive drum 1 without slipping, there is no sliding friction between the two, and therefore, the one-rotation roller 24 rotates on the upstream side of the photoreceptor drum 1. All of the residual toner on the photoreceptor drum l is collected by the cleaning blade 28 without any residual toner being collected afterwards.

In this state where the residual toner 19 is accumulated on the tip of the cleaning blade 23, the cleaning blade 2.8 rotates from the position shown by the dotted line at 1fflB to the position shown by the solid line due to the completion of copying, etc. When a part of the residual toner 19 that has been scraped up and accumulated by the cleaning blade 28 falls as a result of separation from the photoreceptor drum l, the falling toner 25 becomes agglomerated and falls onto the photoreceptor drum l. As shown in the figure, the near kj1. The receiver is stopped by being sandwiched by the lfO section. In this case, since the rotating roller 24 is driven to rotate in the direction of the arrow, the fallen toner 25 is ! There is no leakage to the upstream side of the rotating roller 24 in the rotating direction of the photosensitive drum l. On the other hand, if the rotating roller 24 is made of a releasable elastic material such as silicone rubber or urethane rubber, the dropped toner 25 will not be layered on the rotating roller 24 but will be transferred to the photoreceptor. It is attached only to the surface of the drum l,
The sheet is fed by the photosensitive drum l. Note that at this point, the cleaning blade 28 is separated from the photoreceptor drum l as shown, so that all of the residual toner 19.25 on the photoreceptor drum l is transferred to the toner developing device 8 without any hindrance. It will reach T.

The residual toner 19, 248 on the photoreceptor drum l transported to the position of the toner developing device 8, [as shown at 26 in FIG. The toner particles are wiped off by the brush, mixed with the developer, and collected in the toner developing device 8.

In other words, the residual toner carried over the +b2e body drum and carried to the toner developing device 8 has a thickness of l/X+1, and the static latent image type acquisition area force on the photoreceptor drum l is caused by the cleaning blade 23G. This is what I collected. Therefore, the static flood attraction force 5 does not act between the residual toner and the photoreceptor drum 1, and moreover, between the surface of the photoreceptor drum 1 and the residual toner that has reached the toner representation device 8 ( Since there is an air layer created when cleaning the photosensitive drum 1 with the cleaning blade 28, the residual toner is transferred to the photosensitive drum 1. The attachment force G'i is in an extremely weak state. Therefore, it is possible to easily incorporate the toner into the toner developing device without having to take any special additional measures such as removing the body drum.

In addition, the position of the arrow indicated by X in B and C of the same figure is ia
indicates the position of the rear end of the cleaning area on the photosensitive drum l in each of the illustrated states described above.

In the actual example described above, the rotating roller 24 may be a cylindrical roller with a uniform diameter made of a releasable elastic member, or may have the shape shown in the front external view in FIG. 4, for example. You can also do it.

That is, the rotating roller 27 shown in FIG. 4 has a configuration in which the diameters of both end portions 28 and 28' are slightly larger than the diameter of the central portion 29, without making the diameter uniform.
The i-ends 28 and 28' are brought into pressure contact with the photoreceptor drum 1 as in the previous embodiment, and rotated in conjunction with the photoreceptor drum l, thereby cleaning the rotating surface of the photoreceptor drum l. A gap having a width l is created between the area and the rotating roller 27, at least through which the carrier in the developer can pass.

Such a rotating roller 27'? According to the embodiment of the present invention configured using i: even if the residual toner on the photoreceptor drum L is mixed with developer carrier particles that are relatively large compared to the toner, the charge of one photoreceptor drum L can be maintained. Rotating roller 27 with residual toner after transfer without damaging the surface.
This has the advantage that the cleaning blade 28 can scrape up the toner along with the remaining toner and collect all of it in the toner developing device. If the gap width l in this embodiment is 1 mm or more (t), there is no risk that the toner that has fallen from the tip of the cleaning blade 23 will leak from the gap, and there will be no problem in practical use. was confirmed experimentally. The reason is that the residual toner scraped by the cleaning blade 28 is
The toner is in the form of an agglomerate, and when it falls, it falls in the form of an agglomerate rather than a single toner, and most of the agglomerate toner is 0.1 to This is due to leakage from the gap F.

In addition, as a method of holding the rotating roller, there are cases in which one cleaning is not required regardless of the shape as in each of the above-mentioned practical examples, and in cases where the charge holding body l is placed on the right arm of the copying machine body. The static single crown M image form of the charge holding body l'f: In order to install it, the fulcrum ao'?' as shown in FIG. i: Arm 81 that rotates in the direction shown by arrow A from the center
The arm 81 is configured to be able to move toward and away from the charge holding body 1, and during maintenance etc., the arm 81 is supported by one load holding body 1 with its rotating roller 24 (27) spaced apart from the surface of the four load holding body 1. It is appropriate to configure the device so that it can be locked on a camera such as a photographic device.

Note that the rotating roller 24 (27) is suitably made of a relatively soft material such as rubber, and is preferably made of silicone rubber, as mentioned above as an example.
If the shape is made of a material with high mold release properties such as urethane rubber, or a material with relatively poor mold release properties such as neoprene rubber, use a coating material with high mold release properties such as Teflon or silicone. It is desirable to improve mold releasability.

Further, the diameter thereof is preferably about 20 mm, assuming that the diameter of the photosensitive drum 1 is 128 mm, and there is no problem in practical use if the diameter is in the range of 5 to 80 mm.

FIG. 5 also shows an example of the arrangement of the cleaning blade 23 and the rotating roller 24 in the inventive apparatus, which was tested by selecting the diameters of the photosensitive drum 1 and the rotating roller 24 as described above.

That is, in the orthogonal coordinate axes whose intersection is the rotation center 0 of the photoreceptor drum l, if the rotation direction of the photoreceptor drum l is the direction of the arrow, then in the 1g1 quadrant, there is a position θ, = 25° in the direction H [direction] from the Y axis. The cleaning blade 23 is brought into contact with the inclination angle θ2? i: is set at 70° counterclockwise from the tangent to the circumference of the photoreceptor drum 1 at the contact point, and the rotating roller 24 is set at Y
The experiment was conducted by setting the angle θ8 = 35° clockwise from the axis.

In the embodiment configured as described above, the circumferential speed of the photoreceptor drum 1 was set to t93 mg/sec, and as a result of copying 80,000 sheets of 4% Kurohara paper on A4 size paper, the rotary blade of the photoreceptor drum l of the rotary roller 24 was No toner that had fallen to the side was found at all.

In addition, as a result of conducting the same experiment as the above experiment using the toner recovery device according to the conventional method shown in Fig. 1, which was constructed under almost the same conditions as the experimental device, it was found that toner fell into the toner receiver shown at 22 in No. 21A. The amount of residual toner was about 15 mm, which shows how excellent the residual toner recovery effect of the apparatus of the present invention is.

In the above embodiment, the rotary roller 24 is rotated by the rotational force of the photoreceptor drum 1, but it is also possible to rotate it independently at the same peripheral speed as the photoreceptor drum 1. Of course, a good thing is prayer.

As described above in detail, according to the apparatus of the present invention, all of the residual toner collected by cleaning the residual toner on the loaded holder with the cleaning blade is removed from the cleaning blade in the rotating direction of the charge holder. Due to the action of the rotating roller provided on the upstream side, the toner can be transferred to the charge holding body without falling further upstream and automatically collected in the toner developing device, which is necessary for conventional devices. Not only does this eliminate the need for a container for the residual toner receptacle for collecting the fallen residual toner, but when the device of the present invention is put into practice in a playback device, etc., it is much easier to use than the conventional device. The residual toner receptacle has advantages such as eliminating the need for maintenance work such as removing toner from the container to the outside of the machine.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the general configuration of a playback photographic device to which a conventional method for collecting lingering toner, developed by the applicant, is applied; FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating problems in the conventional method; 3A, B, and C are explanatory diagrams of the structure and operation of the main parts of the device of the present invention, and FIG. 4 is an example of another form of the rotating roller in the device of the invention. The front external view shown in FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining a specific example of the configuration of the main parts of the inventive device. ■...Photosensitive drum (charge holding body) 8...Toner developing device 9...Magnetic roller 19...Collected toner 20.2s...Falling toner 23...Cleaning blade 24. 27...Rotating roller 26...Recovered toner 28, 28'...Both ends of the rotating roller 29...Center portion 30 of the rotating roller fulcrum (rotation center) 31...Arm patent applicant Oilpas Optical Industry Co., Ltd. Figure 1 Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 8

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] L: A cleaning blade that can be brought into contact with and separated from an endless charge holding body that rotates along a predetermined path, and a cleaning blade for the rotary blade 1 of the charge holding body. Further upstream, there is a rotating roller that is in contact with the charge carrier and rotates at the same circumferential speed as the charge carrier, and the residual toner that falls in the form of agglomerates from the cleaning blade is removed from the rotating roller. A receiver is placed on the charge carrier by the proximal surface of the charge carrier, and the residual toner that has not fallen is deposited on the charge carrier, and when the first cleaning blade is separated from the charge carrier, the charge carrier rotates in the rotation path. A toner recovery type blade cleaning device characterized in that the toner is conveyed to a toner developing device provided along the toner. & The rotating roller 2 is rotated following the rotation of the load holder, so that the circumferential speed of the charge holder and the circumferential speed of the rotating roller are made equal to each other. The toner recovery type blade cleaning device according to scope 1.