Patent Document ID: 20110158669
Application ID: 12974068
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. An image forming apparatus comprising a developing unit configured to develop an electrostatic latent image formed on an image carrier, using toner, the image forming apparatus further comprising: a toner bottle housing unit in which a toner bottle is removably housed; a hopper in which toner fed from the housed toner bottle is stored; a conveying unit for conveying toner from the hopper to the developing unit; a stirring member provided in the hopper to stir inside of the hopper while the conveying unit is conveying the toner; a toner-in-hopper detecting unit for determining whether or not toner remains in the hopper; a toner refilling unit for rotating the toner bottle by a unit amount to refill the hopper with the toner from the toner bottle in case the toner-in-hopper detecting unit detects that no toner remains in the hopper; a counting unit for counting the number of toner refilling operations executed by rotating the toner bottle by the unit amount after the toner-in-hopper detecting unit has detected that no toner remains in the hopper; and a control unit for driving the stirring member by driving the conveying unit in case the number of executions reaches a predetermined threshold, and determining that no toner remains in the toner bottle in case the toner-in-hopper detecting unit still detects that no toner remains in the hopper even after the stirring member has been driven, the control unit clearing the counted number of executions in case the toner-in-hopper detecting unit detects that toner remains in the hopper before the number of executions reaches the predetermined threshold, and clearing the counted number of executions in case the toner-in-hopper detecting unit detects that toner remains in the hopper after the stirring member has been driven.