Patent ID: 7751753

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a latent image carrier; a charging device configured to uniformly charge an endless moving surface of the latent image carrier; a latent image forming device configured to form a latent image on the surface uniformly charged; a developing device configured to develop the latent image on the surface to obtain a toner image; a transfer device configured to transfer the toner image on the surface to a transfer member; a toner trapping member configured to trap post-transfer residual toner adhering to the surface of the latent image carrier after passing through transfer processing by the transfer device and before entering developing processing by the developing device, the toner trapping member including a brush member having a support member, and a slanting brush member made from a plurality of bristles that are fixed in a slanting attitude to the surface of the support member, the slanting brush member contacting the latent image carrier with an attitude in which a bristles tip side is inclined relative to a bristles root side towards a downstream side in a direction of movement of the surface of the latent image carrier; and an impelling device for impelling the brush member or a rotating brush roller towards the latent image carrier, so that an amount of impelling of the brush member or the rotating brush roller towards the latent image carrier is smaller during a time that the post-transfer residual toner is being trapped by the brush member or the rotating brush roller than during a time that the post-transfer residual toner is being expelled from the brush member or the rotating brush roller to the surface of the latent image carrier, wherein the post-transfer residual toner trapped by the toner trapping member is recovered within the developing device after re-transferring the toner to the surface of the latent image carrier, and the latent image carrier has an arithmetic mean surface roughness Ra equal to or greater than 0.014 μm and equal to or less than 0.60 μm.