Patent ID: 7555236

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: an image bearing member configured to bear an image on a surface thereof; a transfer unit configured to transfer the image formed on the surface of the image bearing member onto a recording medium; a bias applying unit configured to apply a bias voltage to the transfer unit to remove a developer adhered on a surface of the transfer unit to the surface of the image bearing member; a detecting unit configured to detect a width dimension of the recording medium in a sheet conveyance direction; and a control unit configured to determine whether a cleaning operation of the transfer unit is performed, based on a width dimension of the recording medium detected by the detecting unit and a number of the recording medium printed wherein: the cleaning operation includes a first cleaning operation performed at a start of an image forming operation of a job and a second cleaning operation performed at an end of the image forming operation of the job; and at least one of the first and second cleaning operations is performed when the recording medium has a width smaller than a maximum width of image forming area of the image forming apparatus.