Patent ID: 7979020

Claim:
An image forming apparatus which forms an image electrophotographically, comprising: a housing; an image transfer unit which is disposed in the housing and transfers a toner image to a recording medium; a fixing unit which is disposed in the housing and includes: a heat roller which imparts a transfer force to the recording medium while heating a toner of the toner image transferred onto the recording medium by the image transfer unit; and a pressure roller which is provided on a side below the heat roller and presses the recording medium against the heat roller; a conveying direction change unit positioned to receive the recording medium from the fixing unit, said conveying direction change unit configured to change a conveying direction of the recording medium to an upward direction; a discharge tray provided at an upper part of the housing; a discharge roller which discharges the recording medium, of which the conveying direction has been changed by the conveying direction change unit, on the discharge tray; a curl removing roller which is provided on a conveying path extending between the conveying direction change unit and the discharge roller between the discharge roller and a nipping point of the heat roller and the pressure roller in a vertical direction of the housing and includes: an intermediate conveying roller which bends the recording medium in an opposite direction from a bend direction imparted to the recording medium at the heat roller, a first nipping roller which presses the recording medium to the intermediate conveying roller, and a second nipping roller which presses the recording medium to the intermediate conveying roller, the second nipping roller being disposed on a downstream side of the conveying direction with respect to the first nipping roller, and the second nipping roller being vertically aligned with and higher than the first nipping roller, a conveying direction reversing unit, including the discharge roller, which reverses the conveying direction of the recording medium having passed through the curl removing roller and returns the recording medium to the curl removing roller; and a double-side printing conveying unit which conveys the returned recording medium, wherein a tangential direction toward the upstream side at a contact point between the intermediate conveying roller and the first nipping roller inclines outwardly with respect to the vertical direction, and a tangential direction toward the downstream side at a contact point between the intermediate conveying roller and the second nipping roller inclines outwardly with respect to the vertical direction, and wherein a rotation direction of the intermediate conveying roller is reversed during conveyance of the returned recording medium to the double-side printing conveying unit.