Patent ID: 8548349

Claim:
An electrophotographic marking system to uniformly distribute a material that is separately disposed on an image transfer surface, comprising: a circulation mechanism to circulate the image transfer surface in a two-dimensional manner around an axis, the material being randomly disposed on the image transfer surface; and an apparatus comprising: a retractable blade which is movable between a smoothing position contacting the material that is separately disposed on the image transfer surface while not contacting the image transfer surface, and a stand-by position departing from the material separately disposed on the image transfer surface, the retractable blade uniformly distributing the material on the image transfer surface when in the smoothing position in a manner that does not remove the material from the image transfer surface; a supporting member which supports the retractable blade; a member which rotatably supports the supporting member about a retractable blade rotating axis parallel with circulating image transfer surface; a lever which rotates in connection with the supporting member; a cam on the lever so that the retractable blade can move to the stand-by position or to the smoothing position; and a cam driving unit which drives the cam to rotate.