Image forming apparatus with plurality of optical scanning devices

摘要

An image forming apparatus includes a plurality of optical scanning devices, a mode receiver, a temperature condition judger and a temperature adjuster. In the case of forming an image using one optical scanning device, the temperature adjuster drives motors of unused optical scanning devices at a first rotation speed if a predetermined temperature condition is satisfied and drives the motors of the unused optical scanning devices at a second rotation speed slower than the first rotation speed if image formation is finished during the drive at the first rotation speed.

主权项

1. An image forming apparatus including a plurality of optical scanning devices arranged in correspondence with a plurality of photoconductors, configured to scan the corresponding photoconductors with laser light, comprising:
an optical scanning device including
a light source for emitting laser light,a rotational polygon mirror for reflecting the laser light output from the light source to scan the photoconductor,a motor for rotating the rotational polygon mirror, anda temperature detector for detecting temperature of the optical scanning device; a mode receiver for receiving selection of a single-color image forming mode for forming an image using only one of the plurality of optical scanning devices; a temperature condition judger for judging whether or not a largest temperature difference out of temperature differences between temperature detected by the temperature detector of the one optical scanning device used in the received single-color image forming mode and temperatures detected by the temperature detectors of unused other optical scanning devices satisfies a temperature condition of being larger than a predetermined first temperature difference; and a temperature adjuster for performing an image forming operation in the single-color image forming mode and executing a total motor driving process to drive the motors of the other optical scanning devices at a predetermined first rotation speed if the temperature condition is judged to be satisfied by the temperature condition judger and executing a speed switching process to drive the motors of the other optical scanning devices at a second rotation speed slower than the first rotation speed if the image forming operation in the single-color image forming mode is finished during the execution of the total motor driving process when the selection of the single-color image forming mode is received by the mode receiver.