JPS6138958A - Recorder - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To attain binary picture recording using normal picture with a simple and small-sized constitution without using a stylus electrode or a cleaning device by controlling the electric resistance of a photoconductive layer between conductive layers having different potential levels in a toner carrying means through exposure. CONSTITUTION:A toner carrying body is formed by a transparent surface layer 110, the conductive layers 106, 108 having positive and negative potential levels respectively, and the photoconductive layer 104 arranged between the layers 106 and 108. The electric resistance of the layer 104 is changed by exposure from an exposing part 302 which corresponds to a binary signal and toner 212 on the surface of the toner carrying body 100 is inversely charged with positive potential and repulsed. Only at the time of exposure, the toner 212 is transferred to a medium 312 by a magnetic field formed by the layers 102, 104 turned to an opposite roller 312 having reference potential which is opposed through a normal paper recording medium 312. Consequently, a binary picture is recorded to the normal paper with a simple and small-sized constitution without using a stylus electrode to be driven by a high voltage circuit or a cleaning device.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] Skin! Disaster! The present invention relates to a recording device, and particularly to a recording device that mainly records binary images on plain paper, such as a copying machine, a printer, a plotter, etc. used as an output device of a processing system.

Contrary to the past, in contrast recording using light that allows images to be directly recorded on plain paper, recording is performed by applying a relatively high voltage to a large number of needle electrodes arranged corresponding to one pixel. The drive circuit that applies voltage to the needle electrode has a complex configuration because the applied voltage is high, and is therefore expensive.

In order to improve the recording linear density, if the arrangement density of needle electrodes is increased and the number of needle electrodes is increased, the electrode driving portion of the drive circuit must also be increased accordingly, resulting in a more complex configuration and an increase in cost. Rise.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to overcome the drawbacks of the prior art and to provide a contrast recording type recording apparatus that does not require a complicated electrode drive circuit.

Differences The configuration of the present invention will be described below based on one embodiment.

Referring to FIG. 1, in the recording apparatus of this embodiment, a toner conveying body 100 formed in the shape of an endless belt and having a predetermined width is movably supported by four rollers 10 and 12. The roller 10 is driven by a drive source (not shown) such as a motor, and causes the toner conveying body +00 to run at a predetermined speed in the directions of arrows A1 and A2 shown in the figure.

As can be seen from the cross-sectional view of FIG. 1, the toner transport body 100 includes a photoconductive layer 102 containing a photoconductive material, two conductive layers 104 and 106 formed on both main surfaces of the photoconductive layer 102, and a conductive layer 104. Surface layer 1 containing an insulating material formed on
08 and a surface layer 1 further formed on the conductive layer 10B.
It consists of 10. The surface layer +10 forms a protective layer for the conductive layer +06 and advantageously comprises a material transparent to light. Furthermore, the conductive layer 106 is advantageously made of a transparent conductive material, including a material transparent to light, such as ITO.

As the photoconductive layer 102, a layer whose resistance Rm[ ] in the dark area is much larger than the resistance MAIL in the bright area is advantageously used. Further, the materials are selected so that the resistance Rcl of the conductive layer 104 is greater than the resistance Rc2 of the conductive layer 106. In other words, Rc2 <RmL <Rcl ((RmD
' (1) Toner transport body 100
A toner adhesion section 200 is provided on the surface layer 108 side. As shown in FIG. 3, the toner adhesion section 200 includes a roller 202 that slides on the surface layer 108 of the toner conveying body 100 and rotates in the direction of arrow R, and a doctor blade 204 that slides on the roller 202. roller 20
2 has magnetic poles N and S disposed therein as shown in the figure, and is held at a positive potential by a power source 208 in this embodiment.

Toner 206 is loaded upstream of the doctor blade 204 in the rotational direction R. As the toner 206 in this embodiment, a one-component magnetic toner having relatively high resistance is advantageously used. The toner 206 may be any type of high-resistance single-component magnetic toner. In this example,
A material that is positively charged by friction with the doctor blade 204 or roller 202 is used. roller 202
When the toner rotates in the direction of arrow R, a layer 210 of positively charged toner is formed on the sleeve of the roller 202, typically on the order of several 1101 L thick.

On the other hand, in this embodiment, a negative potential -Vt is applied to the conductive layer tOa of the toner transport body +00 from the power source 14 via an electrical connection means 16 (FIG. 1) such as a conductive brush that is in sliding contact with the conductive layer tOa. Further, a positive potential v2 is applied to the conductive layer 106 from the power source 18 via an electrical connection means 20 such as a conductive brush that is in sliding contact with the conductive layer 106. Therefore, toner transport body 1
00 travels in the direction of the arrow A1, the positively charged toner layer 210 is moved to the surface layer 10B of the toner conveying body 100 by the electric field formed between the toner adhering portion 200 and the toner conveying body 1000 by the power supplies 20B and 14. transferred to the surface.

More specifically, the positively charged toner layer 210 is caused by the electric field formed between the negative potential of the conductive layer 104 and the positive potential of the roller 202 to cause the surface layer 10 of the toner transport body 100 to
8 and adheres thereto, forming a single layer 212 of toner. In normal cases, when a high-resistance toner is used, it is unavoidable that some amount of toner charged to the opposite polarity will be generated. These usually lead to background stains on the reproduced image. However, in the case of this method, an electric field is formed in the direction from the roller 202 of the toner adhesion section 200 toward the conductive layer 104 of the toner conveying body 100, so even if negatively charged toner exists, it will not be absorbed by the toner conveying body. It will not be transferred to 100. Therefore, only positively charged toner is transferred onto the surface layer 108.

The single layer of toner 212 deposited in this manner is uniformly charged and is transported by the toner transport body ioo while being subjected to Coulomb force due to the negative potential applied to the conductive layer 104.

The portion of the toner conveying body 100 to which the first toner layer 212 has been transferred travels in the direction of arrow A1 and reaches the recording section 300-.

As shown in FIG. 1, the downstream side of the toner adhesion section 200 records! 300 are arranged. An exposure section 302 is provided on the side of the transparent surface @110 of the toner conveying body 100. The exposure section 302 has a number of light emitting means corresponding to the number of pixels in the vertical direction constituting one character line, for example, and is scanned in the width direction of the toner conveying body 100, that is, in the direction perpendicular to the paper surface of FIG. Anything is fine. Of course, instead of doing this, it is also possible to use a structure in which light emitting means are arranged corresponding to each pixel forming one character line in the width direction of the toner conveying body 100. As shown in FIG. 4, light 3 from the exposure section 302
04 is irradiated onto the toner conveying body 100 from the transparent surface layer 110 side.

As the light emitting means of the exposure section 302, a light source such as a light emitting diode or a laser that has a switching function itself and can perform line scanning is advantageously used. Alternatively, light from a light source that emits light constantly may be controlled by a light control element having a light shutter function, such as a liquid crystal or an electro-optic effect element such as PLZT. In any case, when the present apparatus is applied to a copying machine, the exposure section 302 is configured to irradiate image light from a document onto the toner conveying body 100 from the side of the transparent surface layer 110 using, for example, an optical fiber. Further, when applied to an output device of a processing system, the light emitting state is modulated by an output information signal from the processing system, and image light is thereby emitted.

As shown in FIG. 4, the surface layer 10 of the toner conveying body 100
On the 8 side, a facing roller 310 that faces the exposure section 302 and rotates in the direction of the arrow S is disposed. The opposing roller 310 is electrically maintained at a reference potential, such as ground air. Opposed roller 310 and toner transport body 100
A recording medium 312 such as paper is interposed between them, and this travels in the direction of arrow A3 at substantially the same speed as the toner transport body 100 that travels in the direction of arrow A2. Opposed roller 3
10, the recording medium 312 is connected to the toner conveying body 1 as shown in the figure.
00 surface layer 10B,
A void 314 is formed.

The resistance of the recording medium 312 is Rp, the capacitance is Cp, and the air gap 3
The capacitance of 14 is cg, and the capacitance of surface layer 108 is Cs.
If the capacitance of the photoconductive layer 102 is C11, the electrical equivalent circuit of the exposure section 300 shown in FIG. 4 is as shown in FIG. 5.

Therefore, regarding the potential of the conductive layer 104 in the portion of the toner conveying body 100 immediately below the opposing roller 310, the potential VoD of the unexposed portion has a resistance value RmIl that is much larger than Rcl, etc., as described above. So,
is equal to the voltage -Vl of the power supply 14, that is, voD~-vl(2). Further, the potential VoL of the exposed portion is expressed by the following equation since its resistance value R+sL is comparable to the resistances Rcl and Rc2. That is, VoL = (Rcl ・V2−(Rc2+RmL)
Vll/(Rcl+Rc2+RIIIL) As can be seen from these equations, the toner in the portion of the toner conveying member 1001 corresponding to the dark area is at the potential VoD, that is, approximately equal to the negative potential of the power source 14, and therefore the conductive layer 108 and the roller 3
Toner transport body 10 due to the electric field formed between
0 remains attached to the surface layer 108. However, the toner in the portion corresponding to the bright portion is absorbed by the conductive layer 104 in that portion.
Since the potential of is the value shown by equation (3), the toner is repelled from the toner transport body 100 side by the electric field formed from the conductive layer 106 further below to the roller 310, transferred to the recording medium 312, and the toner is transferred to the recording medium 312. It is attached to this as 31B.

In other words, the voltage values of the power supplies 14 and 18 are determined by the positive polarity toner 2 depending on the potential Vo of the bright area defined by equation C3).
12 is advantageously selected such that it is repelled from the side of the toner carrier 100. In other words, it is desirable to select so that the numerator of formula (3) is positive.

In this way, toner in a portion corresponding to a relatively bright portion of the image light is transferred to the recording medium 312, and
A toner image is formed on the recording medium 312 in accordance with the signal or image light input to the recording medium 312.

The toner 31B transferred to the recording medium 312 is semi-permanently fixed by an ordinary fixing section (not shown). Also,
The toner 318 remaining on the surface layer tos, h of the toner conveying body 100 is further conveyed by the toner conveying body 1001, returned to the position of the toner adhering portion 200, collected, and reused.

As described above, in this embodiment, it is not necessary to provide a high voltage drive circuit for driving the needle electrode of each pixel of the contrast graph or a circuit for switching them. Furthermore, there is no need for a toner cleaning device as in conventional photoreceptor systems. Therefore, the configuration of the device is simplified, does not require a large space, and the cost is also reduced. Furthermore, there is no generation of ozone due to discharge, and no deterioration of the photoconductive layer due to this.

Effects: As described above, according to the present invention, there is no high voltage drive circuit for driving the needle electrode of each pixel of the contrast graph, no circuit for switching them, and no conventional toner cleaning device. .

Therefore, the configuration of the device is simplified, does not require a large space, and the cost is also reduced.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

1 is a schematic configuration diagram showing an embodiment of a recording apparatus according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a sectional view showing an example of the configuration of a toner conveying body included in the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, and FIG. 1 shows an example of the configuration of the toner adhesion section included in the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, FIG. 4 shows an example of the configuration of the recording section included in the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, and FIG. FIG. 2 is a circuit diagram showing an electrical equivalent circuit of the recording section shown in FIG. of, of 8 +4.18. , power supply 100, , )ner conveyor! 02. ．． ．． Photoconductive layer 104.1Of! , conductive layer 108, , surface layer 110, , transparent surface layer 200, ,) toner adhering section 202, , roller 300, , recording section 302, , exposing section 310, , opposing roller 312, . , recording medium 314 , void

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] A photoconductive layer containing a photoconductive material, a first conductive layer formed on one main surface of the photoconductive layer and containing a conductive material, a first conductive layer formed on the other main surface of the photoconductive layer and containing a photoconductive material. A second layer containing a conductive material that is permeable to
and a surface layer formed on the first conductive layer and containing an insulating material, a toner conveying means for conveying relatively high resistance one-component toner on the surface layer; a first power supply means that applies a potential of a first polarity to the first conductive layer; a second power supply means that applies a potential of a second polarity opposite to the first polarity to the second conductive layer; , a charging and adhering means for charging the toner primarily to a second polarity and substantially uniformly adhering it onto the surface layer; and a second conductive layer in a portion of the toner transporting means to which the toner has adhered. an exposure means for exposing image light from the side of the toner transport means; an electric field forming means formed between the electric field forming means and the toner conveying means, the recording medium is transferred between the electric field forming means and the toner conveying means, and the toner on the surface layer is transferred by the electric field formed by the electric field forming means. 1. A recording apparatus characterized in that a toner image is formed on the recording medium by being transferred to the recording medium according to an exposure state by the exposure means.