Patent ID: 7995950

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image bearing member configured to bear a latent electrostatic image, the image bearing member having a drum form and a total runout of a surface of the image bearing member relative to a driving axis thereof is not greater than 0.080 mm; a latent electrostatic image forming device configured to form the latent electrostatic image on the image bearing member; a developing device configured to develop and visualize the latent electrostatic image on the image bearing member with a polymerized toner including a polyester, the polymerized toner having a volume average particle diameter that ranges from 3 to 8 μm, an average circularity not less than 0.95; a transfer device configured to transfer the visualized toner image to a recording medium; and a cleaning device comprising: a cleaning blade configured to contact a surface of the image bearing member to remove the polymerized toner remaining thereon, a blade edge of the cleaning blade which contacts the image bearing member has a straightness of not greater than 0.1 mm, wherein a static friction coefficient μ of the image bearing member ranges from 0.1 to 0.3, a contact pressure of the cleaning blade to the image bearing member ranges from 1.5 to 10 g/cm, and the image bearing member and the cleaning blade satisfy the following relationships (1) and (2): 0.01 (kg)≦( T off −T 0 )/ r ≦0.15 (kg) Relationship (1) 1.2≦( T on −T 0 )/( T off −T 0 )≦3.8, Relationship (2) wherein T 0 represents a rotation torque (kgcm) of the image bearing member when the cleaning blade is not in contact with the surface of the image bearing member, T off represents a rotation torque (kgcm) of the image bearing member when the cleaning blade is brought into contact with the surface of the image bearing member and the polymerized toner is not used for development on the surface of the image bearing member, T on represents a rotation torque (kgcm) of the image bearing member when the cleaning blade is brought into contact with the surface of the image bearing member and the polymerized toner is used for development on the surface of the image bearing member, and r represents a radius of the image bearing member, and an uppermost layer of the image bearing member comprises fluorine resin particulates and the following relationship is satisfied: 0.15 (μm)≦ D≦ 3 (μm), wherein D represents an average diameter of projection images of the fluorine resin particulates surfacing on the uppermost layer, and a total area of the projection images of the fluorine resin particulates is not less than 10% based on a total surface area of the uppermost layer.