Image forming apparatus having a mechanism for preventing stripping off of a lubricant from a cleaning blade

摘要

An image forming apparatus includes, an image bearing member, a charger which may be a main charger and auxiliary charger for charging the image bearing member, a developing unit for forming a toner image by developing an electrostatic latent image formed on the image bearing member using a toner having the same polarity as that of the charger, a transfer electrode, having a width different from that of the charger and contacting a transfer material, for applying a bias voltage having a polarity opposite to that of the charger to the transfer material, the cleaning blade contacting the image bearing member in a counter direction relative to a moving direction of the image bearing member in order to scrape and remove toner particles remaining on the image bearing member after the image transfer due to the potential of the image bearing member, and a member for reducing a charging potential difference between the charger and the transfer electrode generated on the image bearing member. A lubricant may be applied between the image bearing member and the cleaning blade member. By making the width of the charger and the width of the transfer electrode substantially the same, the charging potential difference between the charger and the transfer electrode generated on the image bearing member is reduced.