Patent Application
20250093797
This application claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No. 2023-150925 filed on Sep. 19, 2023, the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.
The present disclosure relates to a toner container.
In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for recycling of used toner containers of electrophotographic image forming apparatuses, from the viewpoint of energy saving and environmental protection. In accordance therewith, some techniques to replenish the used toner container with toner have been developed.
The disclosure proposes further improvement of the foregoing techniques.
In an aspect, the disclosure provides a toner container including a tank and a cap. The tank includes a cylindrical loading port, through which toner is to be loaded. The cap is formed of a flexible material, and configured to close the loading port. The cap includes a fitting portion, a bottom portion, and a flange portion. The fitting portion is formed in a cylindrical shape that fits an inner surface of the loading port. The bottom portion is located on a far side of the fitting portion, in a cap insertion direction. The flange portion is located on a near side of the fitting portion in the cap insertion direction, to be made to contact an edge of the loading port. The fitting portion includes a cut-away portion formed in an annular shape along a circumferential direction of the fitting portion.
Hereafter, a toner container according to an embodiment of the disclosure will be described, with reference to the drawings.
First, the general configuration of a printer 1 (an example of the image forming apparatus) will be described.
The printer 1 includes a main body housing 3, having a rectangular cuboid shape. In the lower portion inside the main body housing 3, sheet cassettes 4 in which sheets S are stored, and sheet feeding rollers 5 for delivering the sheet S to the right, from the respective sheet cassettes 4, are provided. An image forming device 6 that forms a toner image through an electrophotographic process is provided on the upper side of the sheet cassettes 4, and a fixing device 7 for fixing the toner image onto the sheet S is provided on the right upper side of the image forming device 6 in
Inside the main body housing 3, a transport route 10 is provided, extending from the sheet feeding roller 5 to the delivery roller 8, via the image forming device 6 and the fixing device 7. The transport route 10 is mainly formed of plate-shaped members opposed to each other, with a gap therebetween for allowing the sheet S to pass, and a plurality of transport roller pairs 17, that each serve to transport the sheet S pinched therebetween, are provided at appropriate positions along a transport direction Y. A resist roller 18 is also provided on the transport route 10, at a position upstream of the image forming device 6, in the transport direction Y. On the right side of the fixing device 7, a reversing transport route 10R is provided, which is branched from the transport route 10 at a position downstream of the fixing device 7 in the transport direction Y, and again merges with the transport route 10 at a position upstream of the resist roller 18 in the transport direction Y.
The image forming device 6 includes photoconductor drums 11, the potential of which varies with irradiation of light, charging devices 12 for electrically charging the respective photoconductor drums 11, exposure devices 13 that each output a laser beam based on image data, developing devices 14 that supply the toner to the respective photoconductor drums 11, an intermediate transfer device 15 for transferring the toner image from the photoconductor drum 11 to the sheet S, cleaning devices 16 that remove residual tonner from the respective photoconductor drums 11.
The intermediate transfer device 15 includes an endless intermediate transfer belt 15B stretched around a drive roller 15D and a follower roller 15N, primary transfer rollers 151 opposed to the inner circumferential surface of the intermediate transfer belt 15B, at the position corresponding to the respective photoconductor drums 11, and configured to generate a primary transfer bias, and a secondary transfer roller 152 opposed to the outer circumferential surface of the intermediate transfer belt 15B at the position corresponding to the drive roller 15D, and configured to generate a secondary transfer bias. To each of the developing devices 14, a toner container 20 that supplies the toner thereto is connected.
The image forming device 6 includes four sets of the photoconductor drum 11, the charging device 12, the exposure device 13, the developing device 14, the primary transfer roller 151, the cleaning device 16, and the toner container 20, to form a color image by superposing the toner image of four colors on the intermediate transfer belt 15B. Here, the disclosure is also applicable to an image forming apparatus configured to form the color image with the toner of three or fewer colors, or five or more colors.
The printer 1 also includes a controller 2, having an arithmetic device and a storage device. The arithmetic device may be, for example, a central processing unit (CPU). The storage device may include a storage medium such as a read-only memory (ROM), a random-access memory (RAM), and an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM). The arithmetic device executes various types of operations, by retrieving and executing control programs stored in the storage device. Here, the controller 2 may be realized with an integrated circuit alone, without employing software.
In principle, the printer 1 executes the image forming operation as follows. When a print job by simplex printing is inputted to the printer 1, for example from an external computer, the sheet feeding roller 5 delivers the sheet S from the sheet cassette 4 to the transport route 10, and the resist roller 18 delivers the sheet S, after once stopping rotating to correct the skew of the sheet S, to the image forming device 6 at a predetermined timing. In the image forming device 6, the charging device 12 charges the photoconductor drum 11 to a predetermined potential, the exposure device 13 writes a latent image on the photoconductor drum 11, and the developing device 14 develops the latent image with the toner supplied from the toner container 20, thereby forming the toner image. Then the primary transfer roller 151 transfers the toner image onto the intermediate transfer belt 15B, and the secondary transfer roller 152 transfers the toner image to the sheet S. Thereafter, the fixing device 7 fixes the toner image onto the sheet S, by fusing the toner image while pinching and transporting the sheet S, and the delivery roller 8 delivers the sheet S to the output tray 9. The cleaning device 16 removes the residual toner from the photoconductor drum 11. In the case of duplex printing, the sheet S having the toner image fixed to the first face is made to pass through the reversing transport route 10R and again delivered to the transport route 10, so that another toner image is transferred to the second face of the sheet S.
The tank 21 (see
The loading port 24 is closed by the cap 31 (see
The fitting portion 32 (see
The wall thickness of the joint portion 35C, taken in the radial direction of the fitting portion 32, is equal to the average wall thickness of the portion of the fitting portion 32 other than the cut-away portion 35 and the joint portion 35C, namely the bottom-side fitting portion 32B, and the flange-side fitting portion 32F. In this embodiment, for example, the wall thickness of the bottom-side fitting portion 32B is equal to that of the flange-side fitting portion 32F, and the wall thickness of the joint portion 35C is equal to that of the bottom-side fitting portion 32B and the flange-side fitting portion 32F. The six joint portions 35C have the same width in the circumferential direction. The six joint portions 35C are located at regular intervals along the circumferential direction. Therefore, the six slits 35S have the same length, in the circumferential direction.
The bottom-side fitting portion 32B includes a cylindrical expanded portion 32L (see
On the upper face of the bottom portion 33 (face exposed to outside when the cap 31 is attached to the tank 21), an authentication label 36 (see
When the remaining amount of the toner in toner container 20 mounted in the printer 1 becomes below a prespecified amount, the toner container 20 is replaced. The used toner container 20 is collected by the manufacturer or a specialized contractor, to be recycled.
In the recycling operation of the toner container 20, first the cap 31 is removed from the tank 21. Because of the presence of the cut-away portion 35 at the predetermined positions along the circumferential direction of the fitting portion 32, it is only the joint portions 35C that exist along the circumferential direction, between the cut-away portions 35 adjacent to each other. Accordingly, when the service person draws out the cap 31 by grabbing the flange portion 34, the cap 31 is torn apart along the boundary defined by the cut-away portion 35. This makes the cap 31 no longer usable. A cap that is not torn apart upon being removed can be identified as the one different from the cap 31, and therefore an illegitimate product provided with such different cap can be easily distinguished.
Although the cap 31 is torn apart by being removed, the expanded portion 32L formed on the bottom-side fitting portion 32B is in close contact with the inner wall of the loading port 24, and therefore the portion on the side of the bottom portion 33 is prevented from falling off into the tank 21. Thus, the portion of the cap 31 on the side of the bottom portion 33 (portion including the bottom-side fitting portion 32B and the bottom portion 33) remains in the loading port 24, thereby preventing broken fragments of the cap 31 from falling into the tank 21. The portion on the side of the bottom portion 33 can be easily removed, for example by picking up the bottom-side fitting portion 32B with the fingers.
In addition, since there is no need to cut off a part of the tank 21 in order to remove the cap 31, the tank 21 can be reused, over an unlimited number of times of recycling. Further, employing the cap 31 of the same specification as the originally provided cap 31, at the time of recycling, leads to reduction in manufacturing cost of the cap 31.
After the toner is replenished through the loading port 24, a new cap 31 is attached. The cap 31 can be easily attached, simply by squeezing the cap 31 into the loading port 24.
The toner container 20 according to this embodiment described as above includes the tank 21 including a cylindrical loading port 24, through which the toner is to be loaded, and the cap 31 formed of a flexible material, and configured to close the loading port 24. The cap 31 includes the fitting portion 32 formed in the cylindrical shape that fits the inner surface of the loading port 24, the bottom portion 33 located on the far side of the fitting portion 32, in the insertion direction of the cap 31, and the flange portion 34 located on the near side of the fitting portion 32 in the insertion direction of the cap 31, to be made to contact the edge of the loading port 24. The fitting portion 32 includes the cut-away portion 35 formed in the annular shape along the circumferential direction of the fitting portion 32. The mentioned configuration enables the cap 31 to be removed without damaging the tank 21, and disables the cap 31 from being reused.
In the toner container 20 according to this embodiment, the cut-away portion 35 includes the slits 35S each extending in the circumferential direction, and respectively located at the plurality of positions along the circumferential direction. Such a configuration enables the cap 31 to be easily torn apart, because the stress is concentrated at the joint portions 35C formed between the slits 35S adjacent to each other.
In the case of existing toner containers, unlike the foregoing embodiment, a part of the tank is cut away together with the cap, when the cap is to be removed from the tank. In this case, the fragments of the tank may fall into the inside of the tank. In addition, the cylindrical body to which the cap is attached becomes shorter, each time the cap is removed, and therefore the number of times that the tank and the cylindrical body can be recycled, is limited. Further, another cap that can be attached to the tank, a part of which has been cut away, in other words a cap of a different shape from the originally provided one, is employed at the time of recycling. Therefore, the manufacturing cost of the cap is inevitably increased.
The configuration according to the foregoing embodiment enables the cap 31 to be removed without damaging the tank 21, and disables the cap 31 from being reused, thereby facilitating the user to identify whether the toner container is the legitimate product.
The foregoing embodiment may be modified as follows.
While the present disclosure has been described in detail with reference to the embodiments thereof, it would be apparent to those skilled in the art that the various changes and modifications may be made therein within the scope defined by the appended claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-150925 | Sep 2023 | JP | national |
