Patent ID: 8725028

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image carrier unit including a cylindrical image carrier having a rotational driving shaft rotated about a cylinder axis, a shaft bearing member that rotatably supports the image carrier, and a shaft-bearing holding member that holds the shaft bearing member; a charging unit for charging the image carrier, thereby causing the image carrier to be charged; an exposing unit for forming an electrostatic latent image on the image carrier charged by the charging unit, the exposing unit including a light source substrate that includes light sources arranged in at least one line and a lens array that guides light emitted from the light sources; a developing unit for developing the electrostatic latent image on the image carrier formed by the exposing unit with toner; a transfer unit for transferring the image developed on the image carrier onto an image recording medium; and a fixing unit for fixing the image transferred by the transfer unit onto the recording medium, wherein the exposing unit is movable between a contacting position, at which the exposing unit is supported by an image forming apparatus body and the exposing unit comes into contact with a contacting surface on the shaft-bearing holding member-of the image carrier unit to be positioned at a predetermined position relative to the image carrier, and a retracted position, at which the exposing unit is away from the image carrier unit, and the contacting surface of the image carrier unit at the contacting position is closer to the exposing unit in an optical axial direction than is a surface of the lens array.