Patent ID: 7899344

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: a first cabinet; a toner carrier that is supported in the first cabinet and carries suspension polymerization toner; an image carrier that forms an electrostatic latent image and carries a toner image obtained by imaging the electrostatic latent image by supply of the suspension polymerization toner from the toner carrier; a second cabinet that is disposed adjacently to the first cabinet in a horizontal direction orthogonal to a longitudinal direction of the toner carrier and houses the suspension polymerization toner; a toner amount detector that detects an amount of suspension polymerization toner in the second cabinet; and an empty decision unit that decides whether or not a remaining state of the suspension polymerization toner in the second cabinet is an empty state based on a detection result of the toner amount detector, wherein an inside of the first cabinet is communicated to an inside of the second cabinet through a plurality of openings, the plurality of openings including at least a supply port for supplying the suspension polymerization toner from the second cabinet to the first cabinet and a return port for returning the suspension polymerization toner from the first cabinet to the second cabinet, and the plurality of openings being arranged in the longitudinal direction of the toner carrier, wherein a spacing between one outer edge of one opening provided in one end side in a longitudinal direction of the plurality of openings and another outer edge in a direction opposite to a longitudinal direction of another opening provided in another end side in the longitudinal direction of the plurality of openings has a width not less than a width of an image forming region where the toner image is formed in the image carrier, and wherein the empty decision unit decides that the remaining state of the suspension polymerization toner in the second cabinet is the empty state before the amount of suspension polymerization toner in the second cabinet becomes smaller than the amount of suspension polymerization toner in the first cabinet.