Patent ID: 7221890

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising a plurality of image forming units operable to form respective toner images of respective different colors on a toner-image receiving medium, each of said plurality of image forming units including (a) an image carrier, (b) a static-latent-image forming portion operable to form a static latent image on a surface of said image carrier, (c) a developing portion operable to apply a toner of a corresponding one of said different colors to the surface of the image carrier, according to said static latent image, for thereby forming the toner image of said corresponding color on the image carrier, and (d) a toner transferring portion operable to transfer said toner image from said image carrier to said toner-image receiving medium, said plurality of image forming units being disposed so as to be opposed to said toner-image receiving medium being fed in one direction, and operable to sequentially transfer the toner images from the image carriers to the toner-image receiving medium, wherein an improvement comprises: said developing portion of each of said plurality of image forming units is operable to adsorb the toner remaining on the surface of said image carrier after the toner image formed last on said image carrier is transferred to said toner-image receiving medium; and each of at least one of said plurality of image forming units is provided with a dust removing portion operable to remove, from the surface of said image carrier, a paper dust which has been transferred to the surface of said image carrier during a transfer of the toner image from the image carrier to said toner-image receiving medium, said at least one of said plurality of image forming units including the most upstream one of the image forming units which is located at the most upstream position of the image forming apparatus and which is operated to transfer the toner image to the toner-image receiving medium before each of the other of said plurality of image forming units is operated to transfer the toner image to the toner-image receiving medium, wherein said dust removing portion of said most upstream image forming unit has an element that is in pressing contact with the image carrier, and has a dust removing capacity larger than that of the dust removing portion or portions of the other image forming unit or units.