JPS6013182B2 - Toner supply device for electrophotographic equipment - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a toner replenishing device for an electrophotographic apparatus, and more particularly to a toner replenishing device for uniformly dropping a certain amount of toner into a developer reservoir over a long period of time.

In a general electrophotographic device, such as an electronic copying machine,
A charging device, an exposure device, a developing device, a transfer device, a peeling device, a cleaning device, etc. are operatively arranged around the rotating photosensitive drum.

The surface of the photosensitive drum mentioned above is uniformly charged with a charge of a specific polarity by a charging device, then a light image of the subject to be copied is irradiated by an exposure device, and the developing device is operated to form a photosensitive image on the subject. A corresponding developer image is formed on the surface. The formed developer image is transferred by a transfer device onto a transfer paper conveyed from a paper feed cassette of an electronic copying machine, and after the transfer paper is separated from the photosensitive drum by the action of a peeling device, it is transferred to an electronic device via a fixing device. It is fed to a collection tray attached to the body of the copying machine. When passing through the aforementioned fixing device, the developer image is fixed onto the transfer paper, thus forming a permanent copy image on the transfer paper. On the other hand, after the transfer paper is separated, the developer remaining on the photosensitive drum is removed from the drum by a cleaning device, and the photosensitive drum is provided for a new copy image forming process. When a type of device using a two-component developer composed of toner and carrier is adopted as the above-mentioned developing device, the mixing ratio of toner and carrier is kept constant for practical purposes. This is required.

For this reason, research and development has been conducted on a toner replenishing device that supplies toner to the developer reservoir of the developing device when the mixing ratio of the developer contained in the developer reservoir of the developing device changes due to the use of the developing device. It's been coming. FIG. 1 is a sectional view of a conventional toner replenishing device using a cylindrical toner replenishing member having a groove on its circumferential surface.

Reference numeral 1 is a container for storing toner, and toner 2 is stored in the container 1. As shown in FIG. A cylindrical toner supply member 3 is rotatably attached below the container 1 and is spaced apart from the lower side walls la, lb of the container 1 with a slight gap. The toner replenishing member 3 has a longitudinal V-groove 3a on its circumferential surface, and the toner 2 accumulates in the V-groove 3a due to its own weight. Toner supply member 3
When rotates in the direction of arrow A, a predetermined amount of toner is left in the groove 3a by the fixed member 4 in contact with the circumferential surface of the member 3.
As the rotation of the member 3 further progresses, the toner 2 is removed from the V-groove 3a by the scraping member 5 and falls into a developer reservoir (not shown) located below the scraping member 5. When designing a toner replenishment device, it is important to ensure that toner falls uniformly from the toner replenishment member, that the amount of toner that falls does not change even after long-term use of the device, and that the gap between the toner replenishment member and the toner container is maintained. Consideration must be given to ensuring that toner does not leak.

However, in the general toner replenishing device as shown in FIG. 1, a phenomenon occurs in which toner is irregularly stuck between the side wall b of the container 1 and the toner replenishing member 3.

This phenomenon is the main cause of an undesirable situation in which toner falls unevenly from the toner replenishing member, or the amount of toner falling decreases as the number of times the toner replenishing member is used increases. FIG. 2 shows the results of an experiment using the apparatus shown in FIG. 1, which shows that as the number of times the toner falls increases, the amount of toner falling per time decreases significantly. When the above-mentioned condition occurs, the mixing ratio of the developer in the developer reservoir changes, resulting in a disadvantage that the density of the developer image formed on the photosensitive drum of the electronic copying machine changes. In particular, when the amount of toner that falls at one time is reduced by about 30% or more from the predetermined amount, the change will be noticeable in the developer image that is formed. Therefore, it becomes impossible to form a copy image that can be put to practical use. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a new toner replenishing device for an electrophotographic apparatus that eliminates the drawbacks of the conventional toner replenishing devices described above.

FIG. 3 is a sectional view of an example of the toner replenishing device according to the present invention, and reference numeral 6 is a toner container made of aluminum, in which toner 7 is stored.

A cylindrical toner replenishing member 8 made of aluminum and having a diameter of 28 mm and a length of 470 mm is attached to the lower opening of the container 6 so as to be freely spreadable, and its outer periphery is attached to the lower side wall 6a of the container 6. Some of the surfaces are touching. The toner replenishing member 8 has a V-groove 8 extending in the axial direction in a part of its outer peripheral surface.
It has a. The V groove 8a has a volume of 3.3 blocks,
The arcuate length of the spout on the circumferential surface of the cylindrical toner supply section 8 is set to be on the 7 side. Reference numeral 9 is a Mylar film with a thickness of 100 mm, one end of which is fixed to the container 6 on the front side of the lower entrance, and a felt turtle 0 with a thickness of 1 rib is located near the end of the Mylar film. It is glued. The felt tortoise 0' is constantly in contact with the circumferential surface of the toner replenishing member due to the pressing force of the Mylar film 9, thereby preventing toner from leaking from between the lower side wall 6a and the toner replenishing member 8. Reference number 11
indicates a surinuka member, and one end of the surushi lacquer member 11 is connected to the container 6.
and a support village 12 made of aluminum, and is fixed to the container 6. The first elastic member 13 stuck on the support member 12 and the first elastic member 1
Due to the elasticity of the second elastic body 14 attached to the second elastic member 14 , the sliding member 11 ′ is pressed into contact with the outer peripheral surface of the cylindrical toner supply section 8 . At this time, the super lacquer member 11 is adjusted to have an arcuate contact portion 11a that is longer than the arcuate length of the entrance of the groove 8a on the circumferential surface of the cylindrical toner supply section 8. In the illustrated example, the first elastic body 13 is made of foamed chloroprene polymer rubber with a thickness of 3 ribs, the second elastic body 14 is made of felt with a thickness of 1 skin, and the lacquer member 11 is made of felt with a thickness of 0.3 ribs. Filedon (product name: manufactured by Nippon Felt Kogyo ■) has been adopted, and furthermore, the arcuate trailing portion 11a of the lacquer member 11 covers about 1/4 of the outer peripheral surface of the toner supply member 8. . The sliding member 11 is preferably made of a material that does not easily wear out due to the rotation of the toner replenishing member 8, such as nonwoven cloth, nylon, or the like. The first and second elastic bodies 13 and 14 have the role of pressing the sliding member 11 against the circumferential surface of the cylindrical toner supply member 8, and are made of a material such as foamed rubber felt or polyurethane rubber. is preferred. Reference numeral 15 is a toner scraper made of phosphorescent steel. Using the above-described toner replenishing device of the present invention, the cylindrical toner replenishing member 8 is held in the direction of arrow A at a circumferential speed of 147 mm/sec by means not shown and rotates once in one minute. The experiment was conducted with the following settings.

FIG. 4 shows the experimental results. The vertical axis shows the amount of toner that falls when the toner replenishing member 8 rotates once, and the horizontal axis shows the amount of toner falling, that is, the number of rotations of the toner replenishing member 8. It is shown. Line A and bran B each have an average particle size of 20 peaks, but show the case where toners containing different quality of fluidity modifiers are used. As can be easily understood from the results shown in FIGS. 2 and 4, the toner replenishing device according to the present invention can always drop a constant amount of toner into the developer reservoir of the developing device.

FIG. 5 shows another embodiment of the toner replenishing device according to the present invention, and parts having the same structure as the device shown in FIG. 3 are given the same numbers.

Reference numeral 16 indicates a sliding member stuck on the support member 12 fixed to the toner container 6, and the sliding member 16 is made of an elastic material.

Like the sliding screen member 11 shown in FIG.
Further, it has an arcuate contact portion 16a on the circumferential surface of the toner replenishing member 8, which is longer than the arcuate length of the closed portion of the groove 8a. Bonfelt (trade name: ■manufactured by Nippon Felt Co., Ltd.) with a thickness of 4 skins was adopted as the sliding member 16, and an experiment similar to that conducted on the apparatus shown in Fig. 3 was carried out as shown in Fig. 5. When applied to the device, good results were obtained. As explained above, in the toner replenishing device according to the present invention, since the sliding member is always in pressure contact with the circumferential surface of the cylindrical toner replenishing member over a predetermined length, the following problems cannot be avoided. It is possible to prevent irregular adhesion of toner between the side wall of the container and the toner supply member, and to supply a constant amount of toner to the developer reservoir over a long period of time.

Moreover, in such a structure, the toner inside the groove is conveyed with the belly portion of the bran member slightly entering the toner replenishing member due to the pressing force of the elastic member. Even if there is some variation in the size of the groove during the production process, for example, if the groove width is wide, the sliding member will penetrate deeply;
Furthermore, it is possible to control the amount of toner accommodated in the groove to be approximately constant, such that when the groove is narrow, it is shallow.

In this way, the amount of toner falling from each machine, that is, from the replenishing member, can be made constant within a certain range. Therefore, adjustment of the rotational speed, rotational speed, etc. of each individual supply member can be omitted.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a sectional view of a conventional toner supply device, and Figure 2 is a cross-sectional view of a conventional toner supply device.
3 is a sectional view of an example of the toner replenishing device according to the present invention, and FIG. 4 is a graph showing experimental results when using the device shown in FIG. 3. FIG. 5 shows a sectional view of another example of the toner replenishing device according to the present invention. 6... Toner container, 7... Toner, 8...
...Toner supply department village, 8a...Groove, 11...
...Sliding moat member, 11a... Arc-shaped bush contact part, 12...
Supporting member, 13, 14...Elastic member, 15...
・・Kakiotoshi Miyazaki, 16・・・・・・Numasobe Village, 16a
・・・・・・Arc-shaped contact part. Many Z drawings Tsutomu 2 drawings Many 3 drawings Many 4 drawings Hair 5 drawings

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A container for storing toner, a cylindrical toner supply member rotatably attached to a lower opening of the container and having a groove on its circumferential surface for conveying toner, and a lower opening of the container. an arc-shaped wall portion on the circumferential surface of the cylindrical toner supply member that is provided on the front side and covers a part of the circumference of the cylindrical toner supply member, and which is longer than the arcuate length of the groove; In the toner replenishing device, the wall portion includes a rigid support member fixed to the container, and an inner surface of the support member. and a thin sliding member provided with an elastic member interposed therebetween, and the elasticity of the elastic member causes the sliding member to extend over an arc longer than the arc length of the groove of the cylindrical toner supply member. A toner replenishing device for an electrophotographic device, characterized in that the toner replenishing device is brought into pressure contact with the circumferential surface of a replenishing member.