Toner mass control by surface roughness and voids
View Patent ↗The present disclosure relates to controlling a performance characteristic of an image forming device component having a surface which may include removal of a portion of the surface to expose a plurality of voids and a surface between the voids. The surface between the voids may have a surface roughness Ra in the range of 0.1 to 5.0 microns and the relationship SA V /(SA V +SA C ) is equal to 1-50%, where SA V is the surface area of the voids and SA C is the remaining surface area of the component. The performance characteristic may include the control of toner mass conveyed and/or toner filming and/or the amount of residual toner removed from a photoconductive surface.
1. A method comprising:
generating, for one or a plurality of image forming device components wherein said components have a plurality of voids and a surface roughness Ra between voids, a plot of surface roughness Ra between said voids versus the percent of surface area containing voids including a calculation of constant mass/unit area (M/A) lines;
identifying an operating space defined by an area between selected constant M/A lines; and
manufacturing an image forming device component with a surface roughness Ra between said voids and a percent surface area that is within said identified operating space.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said constant M/A lines have a value of between 0.20 mg/cm 2 to 1.0 mg/cm 2 .
3. The method of claim 1 wherein Ra has a value of 0.1 to 5.0 microns.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein the percent surface area containing voids has a value of 1-50%.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein Ra has a value of 0.1 to 1.5 microns and the percent surface area containing voids has a value of 1-30%.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein said component is a roller and said M/A lines are calculated according to the polynomial fit regression model:
M/A=b 0 +b 1 *V+b 11 *V 2 +b 2 *SR+b 22 *SR 2 +b 12 *V*SR
where M/A=calculated M/A for the roller, V=% of surface area of the roller comprised of voids, SR=surface roughness between voids, and b 0 , b 1 , b 11 , b 2 , b 22 , b 12 are regression coefficients.
7. The method of claim 1 wherein said image forming device component comprises a developer roller capable of conveying toner to a photoconductive surface.
8. The method of claim 1 including positioning said manufactured image forming device component in one of a printer cartridge and a printer.