Patent ID: 8737859

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a toner image forming device that forms a toner image on a recording medium; a fixing unit including: a fixing member, a pressure member that presses the fixing member to form a fixing nip, a heater that heats the fixing member, and a fixing temperature detector that detects the temperature of the fixing member, a recording medium counter that counts recording media processed by the image forming apparatus; a size control unit of white space at a tip portion that controls the toner image forming device not to form the toner image at a tip of the recording medium in a direction of moving of the recording medium to make a white space of a predetermined size, and to increase a white space size when the number counted by the recording medium counter is more than a predetermined number; and a fixing temperature control unit that controls the heater to be a target fixing temperature, and decreases the target fixing temperature when the white space on the recording medium passes the fixing nip and the number counted by the recording medium counter is more than a predetermined number.