Herein is disclosed an electrostatic printing apparatus comprising: a photoconductive member having a surface on which can be created a latent electrostatic image; an intermediate transfer member comprising: a supportive portion; and an outer release layer disposed on the supportive portion comprising a base polymer matrix and an additive selected from carbon nanotubes and carbon black nanoparticles. The carbon black nanoparticles have a BET surface area of 700 m.sup.2/g or greater, the additive is dispersed in the base polymer matrix, and the base polymer is a silicone polymer. The electrostatic printing apparatus is adapted, in use, on contacting the surface of the photoconductive member with an electrostatic ink composition to form a developed toner image on the surface of the latent electrostatic image, then transfer the developed toner image to the outer release layer of intermediate transfer member, and then transfer the developed toner image from the outer release layer of the intermediate transfer member to a print substrate.

An electrophotographic belt including at least a base layer and a surface layer on or above the base layer, the surface layer including a binder resin and perfluoropolyether (PFPE), having a thickness of 2 μm or more. PFPE is removed to obtain a PFPE-removed surface layer, the PFPE-removed surface layer has pores having openings at an outer surface thereof. When assuming that the PFPE-removed surface layer is a solid-surface layer, a ratio of a total volume of the pores contained in the PFPE-removed surface layer to a volume of the solid-surface layer is 8 to 25%. A ratio of a sum of areas of the openings to a unit area (1 μm.sup.2) of the outer surface of the PFPE-removed surface layer is 10 to 35%, and the number of the openings per unit area (1 μm.sup.2) of the outer surface of the PFPE-removed surface layer is 10 to 500.

An intermediate transfer member includes a resin substrate layer and a surface layer containing a cured product of a composition including a specific polyfunctional (meth)acrylic monomer and a specific fine particle of metal oxide.

Described herein is a method of refurbishing an intermediate transfer member (ITM) blanket comprising: cleaning a silicone release layer of the ITM blanket with a cleaning composition; applying a primer composition onto the silicone release layer of the ITM blanket to form a primer layer; applying a silicone release formulation to the primer layer; curing the silicone release formulation to form a silicone release layer; wherein at least one of the cleaning composition and the primer composition comprises a polysiloxane surfactant.

An image forming apparatus includes at least an image bearer; an electrostatic latent image former to form an electrostatic latent image on the image bearer; an image developer to develop the electrostatic latent image with a toner to from a toner image; a first transferer to transfer the toner image from the image bearer onto an intermediate transfer belt; and a cleaner including a cleaning blade having a Martens hardness of from 0.8 to 10.0 N/m.sup.2, to clean the intermediate transfer belt while contacting the surface of the intermediate transfer belt. The intermediate transfer belt includes a thermoplastic resin and a conductive resin, and has a surface concentration of oxygen atoms derived from the conductive resin, measured by XPS, of from 1.0% to 3.0% by atom.

A transfer device includes: an annular transfer belt including an outer surface, a toner image being transferred to the outer surface of the annular transfer belt; a transfer unit including a transfer cylinder; and a facing roller member that is in contact with an inner surface of the transfer belt, in which the transfer cylinder includes a base material, and a surface layer wound around an outer circumference of the base material, the surface layer being replaceable with respect to the base material, the transfer cylinder has a transfer region where the toner image is transferred from the transfer belt to a recording medium in a state where the recording medium is sandwiched between the transfer cylinder and the outer surface of the transfer belt, the surface layer includes an elastic layer, the surface layer has a thickness of 6.0 mm or more and 10 mm or less and an Asker C hardness of 45° or more and 65° or less, and the facing roller member faces the transfer cylinder in the transfer region.

Electrostatic printing apparatus and intermediate transfer members Herein is disclosed an intermediate transfer member for use in an electrostatic printing process, the intermediate transfer member having an outer release layer comprising a polysiloxane that has been cross-linked using an addition cure process such that it contains Si—R—Si bonds, wherein R is an alkylene moiety, and a monoalkenylsiloxane has been reacted with and incorporated into the polysiloxane. An electrostatic printing apparatus comprising the intermediate transfer member is also disclosed.

A high-quality electrophotographic endless belt and a method capable of efficiently producing the belt are provided. A method for producing an electrophotographic endless belt comprising a base layer including a thermoplastic resin composition and an inner-surface layer, which includes: (1) forming an energy curable film having a glass transition temperature on an inner surface of a test tube-shaped preform including a thermoplastic resin and then subjecting the preform to blow molding to obtain a blow-molded bottle; (2) irradiating the blow-molded bottle with energy rays to cure the film to form an inner-surface layer; and (3) cutting out an endless belt from the blow-molded bottle having the inner-surface layer obtained in (2).

Provided is a cleaning blade including an elastic member configured to abut on a surface of a cleaning target member and remove residual material deposited thereon, wherein elastic member satisfies requirements a to c below, a. an abutment part of the elastic member to abut on the surface of the cleaning target member has a reformed layer, b. Martens hardness at a surface of the reformed layer is from 1.5 to 15 N/mm.sup.2, and c. a relationship H/L between maximum Martens hardness H among Martens hardnesses H in a region inward from the abutment part thicknesswise and distance L from the surface of the reformed layer is from 0.010 to 0.2 (N/mm.sup.2.Math.1/μm), where distance L represents minimum distance among distances to the surface of the reformed layer, from positions at which a measured Martens hardness and a measured elastic power are equal to those of the elastic member.

The conductive member of this disclosure is formed of a UV cure resin obtained by curing under ultraviolet ray radiation a composition containing a urethane (meth)acrylate oligomer (A), a photo polymerization initiator (B) and an ionic conductive agent (C), wherein: the ionic conductive agent (C) contains an organic boron complex salt and a compound having a structure expressed with the following general formula(1), and a compounding amount of the organic boron complex salt is 0.2 parts by mass or more per 100 parts by mass of a curing component in the composition.

—SO2—NX—SO2—   (1)

(In the general formula (1), X represents an alkali metal.)