Herein is described a liquid electrophotographic a printing apparatus comprising: a photoconductor; a liquid electrophotographic ink developer unit for applying liquid electrophotographic ink to the photoconductor; a cleaner roller contactable with the photoconductor, the cleaner roller comprising an open-celled foam material having thereon a coating comprising abrasive particles and a binder. Also described herein is a cleaner roller for cleaning a liquid electrophotographic printing apparatus' photoconductor and a method of operating a liquid electrophotographic printing apparatus using a cleaner roller described herein.

There is provided a rubber composition which is obtained by combining an appropriate liquid rubber with a blend system of rubbers having low compatibility that is compatible with advances in image forming devices, and which has excellent processability and is unlikely to cause contamination and the like of a photoreceptor, has favorable characteristics as a rubber, and can form a roller main body of a conductive roller and a conductive roller having a roller main body constituted by the rubber composition. In the rubber composition, 3 to 30 parts by mass of fillers are added to rubbers including an epichlorohydrin rubber, E-SBR, and 3 to 15 parts by mass of LIR. A conductive roller includes a roller main body constituted by the rubber composition.

A cleaning member includes plural bristles including tips that come into contact with an object to be cleaned having a surface including recesses and projections; and a brush base to which the bristles are attached. The bristles each have a non-circular cross-section including a projecting portion that projects toward an outer periphery, at least the projecting portion having a size such that the projecting portion is capable of entering the recesses in the object to be cleaned.

An image forming apparatus that forms an image on a transfer material in an image forming mode, includes: a photoreceptor rotatable in a predetermined rotation direction; a developer that forms a toner image on the photoreceptor using a two-component developing agent including toner and a carrier; a transferor that transfers the toner image on the photoreceptor onto the transfer material; a carrier collector that applies an electric field corresponding to a collecting bias to a carrier adhering to the photoreceptor to collect the carrier; a carrier detector that detects a carrier remaining on the photoreceptor after collecting the carrier by the carrier collector; and a hardware processor that sets the collecting bias in the image forming mode on the basis of the amount of carriers detected by the carrier detector when a carrier adhesion detecting mode for forcibly causing a carrier to adhere to the photoreceptor is executed.

An electrophotographic roller comprising a substrate and a foam layer on an outer peripheral surface of the substrate, the foam layer constituting an outer surface of the electrophotographic roller, the foam layer comprising cells each of which opens on the outer surface, and the foam layer having a zero-point charge measured using a standard carrier of 40 ?C/g or more.

A sheet conveyance apparatus includes a conveyance portion including a rotary member, and a counter member, a first contact member, a second contact member, and a contacting and separating mechanism. The contacting and separating mechanism causes the second contact member to separate from the surface of a rotary member of a conveyance portion when the rotary member rotates in the first direction, and causes the second contact member to abut against the surface of the rotary member when the rotary member rotates in a second direction opposite to the first direction.

There is provided a member for electrophotography, which contributes to formation of a high-quality electrophotographic image. The member for electrophotography includes an electro-conductive substrate and an electro-conductive layer as an outermost layer, wherein the electro-conductive layer contains a resin having a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic cation structure, an anion, and a specific carbon black.

A paper dust collecting member removes and collects paper dust attached to a conveying roller, and is attachable along the attaching direction parallel to the axial direction of the conveying roller via an opening portion provided in a side plate of an apparatus main body. The paper dust collecting member has a removing member and a holding member. The removing member removes paper dust attached to the conveying roller. The holding member holds the removing member. The holding member includes a protrusion portion which is disposed, on its distal end portion side, along a side surface of the removing member and which protrudes in the thickness direction of the removing member beyond a contact surface of the removing member.

An image forming unit forms a toner image on an image carrier using toner. A transfer unit transfers the toner image to a sheet. A cleaner removes, from the image carrier, residual toner that was not transferred to the sheet by the transfer unit. In a detection mode for detecting a part of the image forming apparatus causing a streak, a controller may control the image forming unit to form a pattern on the image carrier, control the transfer unit so that the pattern passes through a transfer position without transferring the pattern to the sheet, control the cleaner to remove the pattern on the image carrier, and control the transfer unit to transfer a residual streak from the image carrier to the sheet. The residual streak occurs from the pattern image by causing an error of the cleaner.

A semiconductive roller is provided, which includes a roller body made of a crosslinked product of a rubber composition containing a rubber component including epichlorohydrin rubber and diene rubber, and a crosslinking component including: (a) 4,4-dithiodimorpholine; (b) sulfur; (c) a thiourea compound; and (d) a thiuram accelerating agent;
wherein the proportion R (part by mass) of 4,4-dithiodimorpholine and the proportion S (part by mass) of sulfur based on 100 parts by mass of the overall rubber component satisfy the following expressions (1) and (2):
2RS(1)
0.5R+S>0.4(2).