Patent ID: 6950620

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image bearing member; electrifying means in contact with said image bearing member for electrifying said image bearing member in order to form an electrostatic image on said image bearing member, a voltage, in which a direct-current voltage and an alternating-current voltage are superimposed on each other, being applied to said electrifying means; and developing means for developing the electrostatic image formed on said image bearing member using toner, wherein after a toner image on said image bearing member is transferred onto a transferring medium, residual toner residing on said image bearing member is carried to a contact portion between said electrifying means and said image bearing member in accordance with rotation of said image bearing member, and a peak to peak voltage of the alternating-current voltage applied to said electrifying means in order to discharge the residual toner adhering to said electrifying means onto said image bearing member during a certain period of non-image forming is set so as to be higher than a peak to peak voltage of the alternating-current voltage applied to said electrifying means during image forming.