As shown in FIG. 4, in a conventional full color copying machine provided with a residual toner recovery device as one type of fine particle recovery devices, a yellow-developer tank 102, a Magenta-developer tank 103, a cyan-developer tank 104 and a black-developer tank 105 are closely installed in this order from the upstream side of a photoreceptor belt 101 within its movable area indicated by an arrow A in the drawing. When a color copying operation is executed, an original document (not shown) placed on a document platen glass 113 is first scanned three times by an optical system 106. In each of the scans, a reflected light beam from the original document is directed through a color separation filter onto the photoreceptor belt 101 for slit-exposure, and thus electrostatic latent images are formed, which have respective complementary colors to yellow, Magenta and cyan toners. Every time each of those electrostatic latent images is formed, yellow toner, Magenta toner or cyan toner is independently supplied onto the photoreceptor belt 101 from the yellow-toner developer tank 102, Magenta-toner developer tank 103 or cyan-toner developer tank 104 in this order. Thereafter, toner images, which are derived from those latent images subjected to the toner of respective colors, are superposed onto a transferring belt 107 that is pressed onto the photoreceptor belt 101.
After the superposing process has been finished, a sheet of copy paper (not shown) is fed to a predetermined position on a transferring roller 109 from a feeding cassette 108, and a toner image is thus transferred onto the copy paper by the transferring roller 109. The copy paper subjected to the transferring process is fixed by heat treatment in a fixing device 114 and then ejected from the copying machine main body. In the case of black-and-white copying process, only the black toner stored in the black-toner developer tank 105 is used and, after a black toner image has been formed on the photoreceptor belt 101, the same processes as those in full-color copying are conducted.
In the copying machine, as described above, the photoreceptor belt 101, the transferring belt 107 and the transferring roller 109, to which toner adheres, are respectively provided with cleaning sections 110 to 112 for scraping the residual toner off therefrom. These cleaning sections 110 to 112 have respective waste toner trays 110a to 112a for storing fine particles of the waste toner that has been scraped off, and this waste toner is then recovered in maintenance.
However, in the arrangement of the conventional waste toner recovery device, the following problems have been presented: Time-consuming maintenance work is required in recovering the waste toner since the three sections of the photoreceptor belt 101, the transferring belt 107 and the transferring roller 109 are individually taken care of. In the conventional waste toner recovery device, the waste toner trays 110a to 112a are attached to the front of the copying machine so as to make the waste toner recovery easier; thus, the bulky waste toner trays 110a and 111a restrict access to the front of the copying machine. Therefore, when locations other than the waste toner trays 110a and 111a are to be maintained, the waste toner trays 110a and 111a tend to interfere with the maintenance work such that the efficiency of the work is deteriorated. If any one of the waste toner trays 110a to 112a, which are individually attached to three places, reaches the maximum storage limit, the machine needs to be shut down and the waste toner needs to be recovered even if other waste toner trays still have some room for storage; this results in low efficiency of the waste toner recovery.
On the other hand, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 23181/1988 (Tokukaisho 63-23181) discloses a copying machine provided with a fine particle recovery device which has a plurality of storing sections for storing developer, a recovery container for recovering used developer, which is placed under these storing sections, recovery pipes for connecting each of the storing sections to the recovery container, conveying members for conveying developer at the storing sections toward the respective recovery pipes. In this copying machine, after the developer in each of the storing sections has been used up, the spent developer is transferred to the recovery pipe by the conveying member, and then falls by gravity through the recovery pipe into one section (the recovery container) to be collected therein. Thus, this system makes it easier to handle the spent developer.
By adopting the above fine particle recovery device into the aforementioned waste toner recovery of the copying machine, waste toner accumulating at each section is collected into one place by means of the conveying member and the recovery pipe; therefore, the above problems can be solved. However, in this case, the waste toner is collected into the recovery container by letting it fall by gravity; therefore, the mounting place of the recovery container is limited to somewhere below the places where the waste toner accumulates. Since the mounting place is not freely selected, the efficiency of the maintenance work is not fully improved. Additionally, the mounting place for the recovered spent developer is also limited.