Patent ID: 8157262

Claim:
A recording apparatus comprising: a recording head which has a recording surface and forms an image on a recording medium; a conveyor unit including three rollers parallel to each other, and a conveyor belt looped around the three rollers; and a roller moving mechanism which moves at least one of the three rollers so as to allow the conveyor unit to shift between a first state and a second state, wherein the first state is a state where a conveyor surface faces the recording surface with a predetermined gap therebetween and the three rollers are in a predetermined relative positional relation so as to apply tension on the conveyor belt, and where an image can be formed by the recording head onto a recording medium supported on the conveyor surface, the conveyor surface being defined on an outer surface of the conveyor belt by two of the three rollers, the second state is a state where a gap larger than the predetermined gap exists between the conveyor surface and the recording surface, and the three rollers are in a relative positional relation different from the predetermined relative positional relation, the three rollers consist of the two rollers defining the conveyor surface, and another roller which is farther from the recording surface than the two rollers in a direction perpendicular to the recording surface, and wherein the roller moving mechanism moves, while leaving the another roller fixed, at least one of the two rollers defining the conveyor surface to a position where the distance from the recording surface to the at least one of the two rollers is the same or smaller than the distance between the another roller and the recording surface, and one of the two rollers defining the conveyor surface is a driven roller, and the roller moving mechanism moves the driven roller.