Patent ID: 8538315

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image forming apparatus main body, an image forming part provided in the image forming apparatus main body and forming an image, a transfer device transferring the image formed by the image forming part on a recording medium, a fixing device fixing the image transferred with the transfer device on the recording medium with at least heat, and a transport unit transporting the recording medium from the fixing device to the transfer device so as to transfer further an image on the recording medium having the fixed image, wherein the image forming apparatus main body has a forward port for forwarding the recording medium having the fixed image thereon by the fixing device to outside of the image forming apparatus main body, and further has a guide unit by which the recording medium forwarded to the outside of the image forming apparatus main body is guided to be retrieved into the image forming apparatus main body, and to be led to the transport unit, the transport unit forwards the recording medium to the fixing device to fix the later transferred image, then transports the medium toward outside of the image forming apparatus main body, and retrieves again the recording medium into the image forming apparatus main body, the image forming part is capable of forming a plurality of color images one by one, and the image forming apparatus further has an image forming control unit by which the recording medium having the fixed image thereon is controlled to be forwarded to the outside of the image forming apparatus main body whenever a single-color image formed by the image forming part is transferred onto the recording medium with the transfer device, and the single-color image transferred with the transfer device is fixed on the recording medium with the fixing device.