Patent ID: 8116665

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an intermediate transfer body having prescribed elasticity on a transfer surface onto which a toner image is transferred; plural image carriers which transfer a toner image onto the transfer surface and which are disposed along a movement direction of the transfer surface of the intermediate transfer body; plural cleaning brushes which are in touch with the corresponding image carrier and clean the residual toner on the corresponding image carrier; and plural development sections which form toner images having a different color from each other with respect to the plural image carriers by using a two-component developing agent made of a toner and a carrier; wherein the transfer surface of the intermediate transfer body has a hardness lower than a hardness of an image carrying surface of each of the image carriers, and is formed so as to have elasticity to such a degree that in the case of sandwiching a carrier particle between the transfer surface and the image carrying surface of the image carrier, the image carrying surface is not scratched.