A foreign substance collection apparatus includes: a frame body; a photosensitive drum; a cleaning roller which collects foreign substances from a surface of the photosensitive drum; a collecting roller which further collects the foreign substances having been collected by the cleaning roller from the cleaning roller; and a scraping member which scrapes off the foreign substances from the collecting roller. A foreign substance collecting portion included in the frame body has, in a posture during use: a first inner bottom surface which is positioned below the scraping member in a gravity direction; an outer bottom surface which is positioned further below the first inner bottom surface; and a connecting surface which intersects the first inner bottom surface and the outer bottom surface and which connects the first inner bottom surface and the outer bottom surface with each other.

A print agent application assembly cleaning tool is disclosed. The print agent application assembly cleaning tool may include a handle and a flexible blade. The flexible blade may be inserted into a gap between a pair of electrodes of a print agent application assembly. The blade may protrude from a distal end of the handle in a lengthwise direction. The blade may have a width that varies to define a curved profile. The width may reduce and subsequently increase along a length of the blade so as to define a recess in an edge of the blade.

A sensor cleaning device includes: a cleaning member including an inclined portion that wipes and cleans an entire surface of a sensor, which includes a long side portion extending in a longitudinal direction and a short side portion extending in a lateral direction intersecting with the longitudinal direction, while moving relative to the surface of the sensor in the longitudinal direction of the surface of the sensor and is disposed obliquely to a wiping direction so that an upstream end portion of the inclined portion in the wiping direction is positioned outside the surface of the sensor in the lateral direction; and a moving mechanism that moves the cleaning member in the wiping direction and in a direction opposite to the wiping direction.

A belt drive device includes a drive unit, a detection unit, a blade, and a control unit. The drive unit rotates an endless belt. The detection unit detects a position of a connection portion in which both ends of a reinforcing tape, which is provided on an outer surface of an edge of the belt in a width direction orthogonal to a rotation direction of the belt, in a longitudinal direction along the edge of the belt are overlapped and connected. The blade comes into contact with an outer surface of the belt and an outer surface of the reinforcing tape and is provided to extend in the width direction. The control unit controls driving of the drive unit based on a detection result obtained by the detection unit such that when the drive unit rotates the belt by a constant length in a reverse direction from one end of the reinforcing tape overlapped inside toward the other end of the reinforcing tape overlapped outside at the connection portion from a state in which the belt is stopped, the drive unit rotates the belt in a forward direction to a rotation position where the other end of the reinforcing tape does not come into contact with the blade by a reverse rotation and stops the belt before the belt is reversely rotated.

An image forming apparatus includes: a toner image former that forms a toner image on an outer peripheral surface of a photosensitive rotating body and that transfers the toner image having been formed onto a transfer receiving object; a detector that detects a grayscale abnormality of the toner image on the photosensitive rotating body or the transfer receiving object; a cleaner that cleans the outer peripheral surface of the photosensitive rotating body; and a hardware processor that causes the cleaner to clean when the detector detects the grayscale abnormality at a same position in a main scanning direction per circumferential length of the photosensitive rotating body in a sub-scanning direction.

An electrostatic image developing toner includes toner particles, layered compound particles, and inorganic particles. The content of titanium in the electrostatic image developing toner is 0.1 ppm or more and less than 1,500 ppm.

There is provided a method of producing a blade for cleaning a toner image retainer, the method including: binding an abutting layer that abuts against the toner image retainer and a supporting layer that supports the abutting layer, wherein the maximum value D of a difference between a first loss tangent at 1 Hz and a second loss tangent at 100 Hz of the blade that includes the abutting layer and the supporting layer satisfies the formula: 0.2≤D≤0.7, wherein the maximum value D is a maximum value of a difference between the first loss tangent and the second loss tangent at temperatures within a range of 0° C. to 50° C.

An electrostatic-image developing toner includes toner particles, layered compound particles, and a free oil. The mass ratio Ma/Mb of the content Ma of the layered compound particles to the content Mb of the free oil is 0.05 or more and 100 or less.

A drum cleaner in a drum unit removes toner from a photosensitive drum. A waste-toner conveyance pipe has a waste-toner discharge port and conveys toner removed from the photosensitive drum by the drum cleaner. A toner accommodation chamber accommodates toner to be supplied to a developing roller. A waste-toner accommodation chamber accommodates toner removed from the photosensitive drum. A toner cartridge rotatably moves relative to the drum unit between: a first position at which a waste-toner receiving port is separated from the waste-toner discharge port in a state where the toner cartridge is mounted on the drum unit; and a second position at which an internal space of the waste-toner accommodation chamber is in communication with an internal space of the waste-toner conveyance pipe through the waste-toner discharge port and the waste-toner receiving port in a state where the toner cartridge is mounted on the drum unit.

An image forming apparatus includes a photosensitive drum, a charging device, an exposing device, a developing device, and a cleaning device. The cleaning device includes a toner keeping member, which has toner keeping portions disposed respectively at the opposite end sides of a polishing roller along its axial direction with a gap from the outer circumferential surface of the polishing roller to keep between themselves and the polishing roller the toner removed off the outer circumferential surface of the photosensitive drum. The toner keeping portions extend along the axial direction of the polishing roller, and of each toner keeping portion, one end part along the axial direction is located outward of an end part of a guaranteed development region but inward of an end part of a developing roller and the other end part is located outward of an end part of the polishing roller.