Patent 7587163 was granted and assigned to Xerox on September, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
This is a cleaning blade useful in an electrophotographic marking system. Under certain conditions, cleaning blades will tuck when the blade continuously contacts a photoconductive surface of this marking system. This tucking causes abrading and damage to the moving photoconductive surface. To prevent or minimize tucking, a blade stiffener is used in this invention in either an add-on or as a part of the originally-manufactured elastomeric blade.