Abstract: An endless belt including an endless body having opposite side edges and an interior surface, and a pair of spaced apart parallel guides bonded to the interior surface of the endless body at positions adjacent to the side edges thereof and extending longitudinally along the side edges, wherein each of the guides is made of an elastic material and has inside and/or outside surfaces having specific roughness.

Abstract: An image forming apparatus comprises a latent image support which supports an electrostatic latent image. A charging unit charges a surface of the image support. A latent image formation unit forms an electrostatic latent image on the image support surface. A developing unit develops the latent image with toner to form a toner image. A transfer unit transfers the toner image from the image support to a recording medium. A ransnsport unit transports the recording medium so that the image support surface is countered to a surface of the recording medium. The surface of the image support has a coefficient of friction ranging from 0.1 to 0.7 according to Euler belt method, and a difference between a speed of the image support and a speed of the recording medium is below 1%, and the image support has an outermost surface containing a filler and a binder resin.

Abstract: In an electrophotographic image forming apparatus of the type including a plurality of image carriers arranged along an image transfer belt and an image transferring device configured to transfer toner images of different colors from the image carriers to a sheet being conveyed by an image transfer belt or by way of the image transfer belt by applying a bias to the belt, a bias applying method of the present invention can measure a current leaking between a plurality of high-tension power supply sections or to the ends thereof as AC resistances between respective terminals and therefore to accurately measure the leak currents of DC components. Therefore, when relatively high DC components are selected, a difference in current between a plurality of power supply sections can be maintained constant.

Abstract: An image forming apparatus of the present invention includes a cleaning device for cleaning an intermediate image transfer body. A cleaning blade included in the image transfer body is formed of fluorocarbon resin or a thin layer of fluorocarbon resin is formed on the surface of the intermediate image transfer body. Further, wax is coated on the intermediate image transfer body or wax or lubricant powder is contained in toner. A moving mechanism holds the cleaning blade spaced from the intermediate image transfer body at least when image formation is not under way.

Abstract: A coating liquid for an electrophotographic photoconductor intermediate layer comprising a titanium oxide and a polycarboxylic acid polymer in a solvent is provided. The content of the polycarboxylic acid polymer is 0.3 to 10 parts by weight in respect to 100 parts by weight of the titanium oxide, and an acid value of the polycarboxylic acid polymer is 30 to 400 mgKOH/g.

Abstract: In a connection structure of a flat cable to terminals of the present invention, the conductors held by the back film of the flat cable are ultrasonic welded to the terminals of an external part. In this arrangement, even if the conductors are formed to a very thin thickness, since they are neither twisted nor separated from each other, solid-state welding can be made to target positions.