This invention relates in general to a fusing apparatus for an electrostatographic reproduction device, and more particularly to a precision release agent management system for the fusing apparatus for an electrostatographic reproduction device.
In electrostatographic reproduction apparatus, such as electrophotographic copier/duplicators, printers, or the like, a light image of an original document to be printed or copied is typically recorded by either digital or analog devices as an electrostatic latent image upon a photosensitive member. Subsequently, the latent image is rendered visible (i.e., developed) by application of electrostatically charged marking particles, commonly referred to as toner. The developed toner image can be either fixed directly upon the photosensitive member, or transferred from the photosensitive member to another support substrate, or receiver member, such as a sheet of plain paper, with subsequent affixing of the toner image thereto.
In order to fix or otherwise fuse the toner material onto a receiver member permanently, it is generally necessary to apply heat so as to elevate the toner material to a temperature at which constituents of the toner material coalesce and become tacky. This action causes the toner to flow to some extent into the fibers or pores of the receiver member or to otherwise adhere to the surface thereof. Thereafter, as the toner material cools, solidification occurs causing the toner material to be bound firmly to the receiver member.
One method for thermal fusing of toner images onto a receiver member has been to pass the receiver member with an unfused toner image thereon between a nip formed by a pair of opposed roller members that are in contact with each other, wherein at least one of the roller members is heated. During operation of a fusing system of this type, the receiver member to which the toner image is electrostatically adhered is moved through the nip formed between the rolls with the toner image contacting the fuser roller thereby to affect heating of the toner image within the nip. Typical of such fusing devices are two roller systems wherein a fuser roller is coated with an adhesive material, such as a silicone rubber; other low surface energy elastomers, such as a Viton® fluoroelastomers available from E.I. DuPont De Nemours of Wilmington, Del.; or other low surface energy material, such as tetrafluoroethylene polymer resins like, for example, Teflon® resins also sold by DuPont.
In the foregoing fusing systems, however, since the toner image is tackified by heat, it frequently happens that a part of the image carried on the receiver member will be retained by the heated fuser roller and not penetrate into the receiver member surface. This tackified material can stick to the surface of the fusing roller and come in contact with a subsequent receiver member bearing another toner image to be fused. Thus, a tackified image, which has been partially removed from a first receiver member, may thereafter transfer to a subsequent second receiver member in non-image portions of the second receiver member. In addition, a portion of the tackified image of the second receiver member may also adhere to the heated fuser roller. In this way and with the fusing of subsequent sheets bearing toner images, the fuser roller can eventually become thoroughly contaminated and unusable, thereby requiring replacement of the fuser roller itself. In addition, since the fuser roller continues to rotate when there is no substrate bearing a toner image to be fused, toner that may be adhered to the fuser roller can be transferred from the fuser roller to the pressure roller, and also to other rollers and components associated with the fuser system, thereby contaminating the overall fuser system. The foregoing conditions are referred to generally in the printing/copying art as “offset”. Attempts have been made to control heat transfer to the toner and thereby control offset. However, even with adhesive surfaces provided by the silicone elastomers and the other materials mentioned hereinabove, this has not been entirely successful.
It has also been proposed to provide toner release agents such as silicone oil, and in particular poly(organosiloxane) oils like poly(dimethylsiloxane), that are applied to the surface of the fuser roller to act as a polymeric release agent and thereby reduce offset. The use of such release agents is reported, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,964,431 and 4,056,706, the teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference. These release agents possess a relatively low surface energy and have been found generally suitable for use in a heated fuser roller environment. In practice, a thin layer of poly(organosiloxane) oil (also referenced as silicone oil hereinafter) release agent is applied to the surface of the heated fuser roller to form an interface between the fuser roller surface and the toner image carried on the support material. Thus, a low surface energy, easily parted layer is presented to the toners that pass through the fuser toning nip and thereby reduces the amount of toner which offsets to the fuser roller surface.
Various methods are known for applying release agent materials to a fuser member such as a heated fuser roll. One such system comprises a Release Agent Management (RAM) system including a donor roll that contacts the fuser member to which the oil or release agent material is applied. The donor roll also contacts a metering roll, which conveys the oil from a supply of oil to the donor roll. With such a system, it is customary to use a metering blade to meter the silicone oil or other suitable release agent material to a desired thickness onto a metering roll. In the fusing of monochrome (i.e. black on a conventional imaging substrate) the uniformity of the oil layer on the metering roll is not so critical compared to that required for color toner images, particularly, those associated with transparency substrate materials used for optically projecting the color images.
In view of the above, this invention is directed to a precision release agent management system for an electrostatographic reproduction apparatus fuser device. The precision release agent management system includes a reservoir adapted to contain a release agent. A wick absorbs release agent from the reservoir. A metering member receives release agent from the wick, which is supported for resiliently urging into operative contact with the metering member. A blade member is associated with the metering member to establish a desired thickness of release agent on the metering member, and a donor member is adapted to receive release agent from the metering member, and operatively contact the fuser device to apply the release agent thereto. A plurality of features is associated with the reservoir for precise alignment of the donor member, the metering member, and the metering blade.
The invention, and its objects and advantages, will become more apparent in the detailed description of the preferred embodiment presented below.
In the detailed description of the preferred embodiment of the invention presented below, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, in which:
Referring to the accompanying drawings,
Particulate imaging material 40, such as toner, disposed on a receiver 42 is fused into the receiver 42 at the fusing nip 30 by the application of heat and pressure. As shown, a heating lamp 44 is connected to a control circuit 46. The heating lamp 44, as known to those skilled in the art, may be provided inside the core of the fuser roller 20 as shown in
A wicking device 32 in a form including of a wick 36, absorbs polymeric release agent 33 contained within reservoir 34. The wick 36 conveys the polymeric release agent 33 from reservoir 34 by wicking action to a metering roller 48, which contacts or is otherwise placed in close proximity to wick 36. Due to the rotational action (as shown by the arrow within metering roller 48 in
Disposed in an opposed, contacting relationship and intermediate position between the fuser roller 20 and the metering roller 48 is a release agent donor roller 50. The release agent donor roller 50, due to rotational action (as shown by the arrow within donor roller 50 in
Referring now to
The release agent donor roller 50 is typically in the configuration of an economical, highly reliable, long life cylindrical roller which is preferably conformable with a fuser roller 20 and provides substantially uniform delivery of an effective amount of polymeric release agent 33 as previously described. The polymeric release agents employed with the fusing system can be any of those known to the art, such as those referenced in the U.S. Patents previously incorporated herein by reference. Preferably, the polymeric release agent 33 is a poly(Sloane) oil, most preferably a poly(dialkylsiloxane), and most preferably a poly(dimethylsiloxane) oil. Such poly(organosiloxane) oils can generally have a viscosity of from about 10 to about 200,000 centistokes (cts), and preferably, have a viscosity of from about 40 to about 15,000 cts as measured with a Brookfield viscometer at 25.degree. C. The poly(organosiloxane) oil in preferred embodiments also has functional groups in either a terminal position on the siloxane polymer chain, or pendant to such siloxane chain, or both, such as those polymeric release agents disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,029,827; 4,101,686; 4,185,140; and 5,157,445 previously incorporated by reference, which groups can interact with the outer surface of the fuser roller 20 such that a thin film of the polymeric release agent is formed on the surface of such fuser roller. In preferred embodiments, the poly(organosiloxane) oil has functional groups, including carboxy, hydroxy, epoxy, isocyanate, thioether, hydride, amino, or mercapto groups, and more preferably hydride, amino or mercapto groups, to provide an interfacial barrier layer between the fusing surface and toner 40 on receiver 42. Blends of such poly(organosiloxane) oils may also be used.
The precision release management system according to this invention is generally designated in
In order to create a streak free release agent film, the metering roller 48 needs to be contacted by the wick 36 in the manner as shown in
Compared to a system with a fixed (i.e., non-pivoting) wick bracket, the precision release agent management system 100 of this invention, with the spring loaded wick bracket 36a, induces a much lower drag torque on the metering roller 48, and thus ultimately on the fuser roller 20. Maintaining the system drag torque as low as possible is critical for the life of the fuser roller that gets contacted by the precision release agent management system 100. It also enables the metering roller 48 and the donor roller 50 to rotate at substantially the same speed as the fuser roller 20. By enabling a low system drag less than 5% speed difference can be achieved. That is, there is substantially no slippage between the rollers, which in turn guarantees consistent properties for the precision release agent management system 100, and thus application of a consistent and uniform release agent film on the fuser roller 20.
A further aspect of this invention is that the precision release agent management system 100 provides accurate alignment (parallelism) of the three components of the system; i.e., the metering roller 48, the donor roller 50, and the metering blade 49 (and the metering blade holder 80 described herein below with reference to
The alignment is especially important between the metering blade and the metering roller so that the load between the metering blade edge and the metering roller is consistent, which is vital for a uniform release agent film thickness.
In order to keep the properties of the precision release agent management system 100 consistent, it is important that during operation the metering roller 48 stays locked in place. On the other hand, the metering roller 48 needs to be easily removable for serviceability of the precision elements of the release agent management system 100. The arrangement of the features, described with reference to
In still another aspect of this invention, the metering blade 49 is contained in the metering blade holder 80 in the described manner. The metering blade holder 80 includes a blade holder arm 82, a blade retainer element 84, and a loading cup 86. These blade holder elements are rigidly connected to form a loading arm assembly. The pivot point 88 of this assembly is the pivot point of the blade retainer element 84. By rotating the loading arm assembly clockwise around its pivot point 88, the metering blade 49 is loaded against the metering roller 48. The actual loading force is provided by a compression spring 90 that rests on a base plate 92 coupled to the housing of the reservoir 34. The compression spring 90 is constrained for movement about a spring retaining stud 94 that keeps the spring 90 in place and engagement with a washer 96 that slides on the spring retaining stud 94. The action of the spring 90 and the washer 96 transmits a loading force to loading cup 86 and thus the loading arm assembly. That is, in the assembled position, as shown in
The load of the metering blade 49 on the metering roller 48 is thus the product of the compression spring 90 and the rubber material of the metering blade 49. The force that is critical for the appropriate desired rate of the release agent on the metering roller 48 is the force on the edge of the metering blade 49 that contacts the metering roller surface. The balance of the compression spring 90 and the rubber material of the metering blade 49 determines this edge force (blade load), where the spring constant of the compression spring 90 is much lower than the spring constant of the rubber material of the metering blade 49. The advantage of this blade loading system is that the blade load can be held sufficiently constant despite any tolerances in the parts involved, because slight changes in the deflection of the compression spring 90 causes only little changes in the force it puts out. On the other hand, if the metering blade were loaded up by displacement of the loading arm assembly, slight changes of this displacement, caused by tolerances, would cause significant changes in the metering blade load and would thus change the rate of the release agent significantly as well.
The invention has been described in detail with particular reference to certain preferred embodiment thereof, but it will be understood that variations and modifications can be effected within the spirit and scope of the invention.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20060088347 A1 | Apr 2006 | US |