US Patent 7991309 Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus which is free from occurrence of image noise due to the bleed phenomenon even without providing any contact-and-separation mechanism for the transfer member includes a control device which counts stop time elapsing from a stop to a restart of the image carrier, calculates an avoidance sheet count corresponding to the stop time at a restart of the image carrier, and makes a toner image carried on only part of the image carrier that has been out of the nip against the transfer member during the stop of the image carrier until the avoidance sheet count is reached after the restart of the image carrier.