Conventional fusers include an internal pressure roll (“IPR”), and an external pressure roll (“EPR”). Some fusers such as belt-roll fusers entrain a fuser belt between the IPR and the EPR. A fusing nip is conventionally defined by a region under pressure between the EPR and the IPR in either type of fuser unit. Some conventional fusers utilize a hard IPR and a soft EPR to form a fusing nip for fusing an image to a substrate that has just received toner from a transfer station. FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a related art belt-roll fuser architecture.
Conventional belt-roll fusers often have a stripping shoe that is used to load an inner side of the fusing belt to generate an effective fusing nip pressure in a region beyond the region under pressure between the EPR and the IPR. While the stripping shoe may help generate an effective fusing nip pressure, belt-roll fusers that utilize conventional IPR and EPR architecture with a stripping shoe still often face image related defects such as, but not limited to, gloss related image quality (“IQ”) defects, stripping performance, and failure to demonstrate process latitude. These issues are caused by a variance in pressure in the fusing nip that results from the inherently required discontinuity between the end of the roll to roll contact zone and the start of the stripping shoe. Maintenance costs may also be increased by the presence of the stripping shoe because of wear that the stripping shoe may experience or cause on the fuser belt, thereby requiring frequent repair and/or replacement.