Patent ID: 8861990

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image bearing member for bearing a developer image; driving means for rotationally driving said image bearing member; a developing device for developing an electrostatic latent image on said image bearing member into the developer image; a cleaning blade, slidably contacting said image bearing member which is rotated, for removing from the image bearing member a developer remaining on said image bearing member after transfer of the developer image; control means capable of executing a stop operation of said image bearing member in which said image bearing member is, after being temporarily stopped at an end of an image forming operation, rotated in the same direction as that during the image forming operation and then is rotated in a direction opposite to that during the image forming operation; and predicting means for predicting a remaining usable lifetime of said image bearing member, wherein in the stop operation of said image bearing member after the remaining usable lifetime is below a threshold, said control means controls an amount of rotation in the direction opposite to that during the image forming operation so as to be smaller than the amount of rotation before the remaining usable lifetime is below the threshold.