Patent ID: 7995953

Claim:
An electrostatic printing machine adapted for high speed printing comprising; (a) a toner supply device to supply to a toner supply roller a high viscosity highly concentrated liquid toner; (b) a metering roller which receives a thin layer of the liquid toner from the toner supply roller; (c) a development member; (d) the metering roller bearing against the development member with an interference fit to transfer a thin layer of the liquid toner onto the development member; (e) a carrier liquid displacement device to act upon the thin layer of liquid toner on the development member to push toner particles in the thin layer towards the surface of the roller and to leave a carrier liquid rich layer on the outside of the thin toner layer; (f) an image forming stage, the image forming stage comprising an image carrying member having a surface adapted to retain an electrostatic latent image thereon; (g) the development member engaging against the image carrying member with an interference fit to give a selected contact time therebetween; (h) a development stage in which liquid toner particles in the thin layer on the development member are transferred to the image carrying member under the influence of the electrostatic latent image on the image carrying member to provide a developed image thereon; (i) an intermediate transfer stage in which the developed image is transferred from the image carrying member to an intermediate transfer member, with an interference fit between the image carrying member and the intermediate transfer member to give a selected contact time therebetween; and (j) a transfer stage in which the developed image is transferred from the intermediate transfer member onto a substrate; wherein the interference fit of the development member against the image carrying member is from 50 to 2000 μm and the interference fit of the metering roller against the development member is from 50 to 2000 μm; (k) wherein the metering roller comprises a pattern of recesses thereon and further including a doctor blade bearing against the metering roller.