Patent ID: 7756427
Filing Date: 2010-07-13
Classification: G03G

Abstract:
1. An image forming system comprising: an image forming apparatus; and a toner container mountable to the image forming apparatus, the toner container including an information providing section which provides toner-quality information indicative of quality of a toner contained in the toner container, to the image forming apparatus, said information providing section having a storage section that stores therein the toner-quality information about the toner contained in the toner container, the image forming apparatus includes: a toner-container mounting section which allows the toner container to be demountably mounted thereon; an information acquisition section which acquires the toner-quality information about the toner contained in the toner container, from the information providing section of the toner container mounted on the toner-container mounting section; a printing-data producing section which produces printing data; a control section which controls respective operations of the information acquisition section and the printing-data producing section, the control section being operable, based on the toner-quality information acquired by the information acquisition section, to identify the quality of the toner contained in the toner container and set a printing function based on the identified toner quality, to the printing-data producing section; and a remaining-amount management section which manages a remaining amount of the toner contained in the toner container on the toner-container mounting section, wherein upon detecting based on a management result from the toner-container mounting section that the remaining amount of the toner contained in the toner container mounted on the toner-container mounting section becomes zero, the control section is operable to delete the toner-quality information stored in the storing section at the time, and wherein, when the information acquisition section fails to acquire the toner-quality information about toner contained in the toner container mounted on the toner-container mounting section, the control section is operable to set to the printing-data producing section, a printing function that is lower than that of the case where the information acquisition section acquires the toner-quality information, regardless of the quality of the toner contained in the toner container.