Patent ID: 7937021

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a body; a transport belt that comprises a transport face, which is downward directed in the gravitational direction, and that transports the sheet while supporting the sheet on the transport face; a plurality of developer-image forming portions that form a developer image on the sheet transported by transport belt; a fixing device that comprises a contact portion disposed at a lower position than the transport face, and that fixes the developer image on the sheet by the contact portion; and a tension roll that stretches the transport belt; wherein each of the plurality of developer-image forming portions includes an image carrier, respectively, wherein P is substantially equal to π×D, wherein P is a distance between a first nip portion of a first image carrier and second nip portion of a second image carrier, adjacent to the first image carrier, and D is a diameter of the tension roll; and wherein the diameter of the tension smaller than a diameter of each of the image carriers.