Patent ID: 7917053

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image bearing member, the image bearing member having an endless image bearing surface and supported for rotation; a charging member made of a brush provided in contact with the image bearing surface to define a charging region; a first transfer station having a first region in which a toner image is transferred onto the rotating image bearing surface, the first transfer region being located on a downstream side of the charging region with respect to a normal rotational direction of the image bearing member; a second transfer station having a second transfer region in which the toner image is transferred from the rotating image bearing surface onto a recording medium passing therethrough, the transfer region being located on the downstream side of the first transfer region and on an upstream side of the charging region with respect to the normal rotational direction of the image bearing member; and a controller for controlling an image forming operation in which the toner image is provided to the image bearing surface at the first transfer region and provided to the recording medium at the second transfer region; and a transfer operation in which the rotation of the image bearing member is halted and then toner particles accumulated in the brush are transferred onto the image bearing surface at the charging region and the controller transports a portion of the image bearing surface to which the toner particles are transferred from the charging brush into a region extending from the second transfer region to the charging region with respect to the normal rotational direction.