Patent ID: 7720400

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a latent image carrier which carries an electrostatic latent image; a developing unit which visualizes with toner the electrostatic latent image carried by the latent image carrier and forms a toner image; an intermediate transfer medium to which the toner image is transferred from the latent image carrier and which rotates and transports the toner image to a predetermined transfer position and transfers the toner image to a recording medium; a cleaner which abuts on the surface of the intermediate transfer medium and removes toner which adheres to the surface of the intermediate transfer medium after the transfer to the recording medium; and a controller which, assuming that the direction which is orthogonal to the travel direction in which the intermediate transfer medium moves is a width direction, executes toner accumulating processing during which predetermined toner images are formed as end patch images in end areas of the surface of the intermediate transfer medium which are located on outer side along the width direction relative to an image forming region in which a toner image corresponding to size of the recording medium is formed and the cleaner then removes the end patch images, wherein the cleaner includes a blade-like scraping member which extends along the width direction, has a wider width than the width of the image forming region, abuts on the intermediate transfer medium and scrapes off toner, and a toner reservoir member which is disposed to the scraping member along the width direction and holds toner scraped off from the intermediate transfer medium near a tip of the scraping member, and the controller executes density controlling processing of optimizing a density controlling factor which influences a density of an image based on detected densities of toner images which are control patch images which are formed while varying the density controlling factor, and the end patch images are formed at the same time that the control patch images are formed.