Apparatus for cleaning photoconductive belt

Claim 1

A cleaning apparatus for cleaning a photoconductive belt of a seamless type which is used within a recording system for transferring a latent image of information to be recorded onto a recording paper, the photoconductive belt being rotated along a rotation path by a plurality of supporting rollers, said cleaning apparatus comprising: blade means provided at a first position along the rotation path of the photoconductive belt for removing a residual toner from the photoconductive belt; brush means provided at a second position upstream of the first position along the rotation path of the photoconductive belt, the brush means having a pile material coming in contact with a surface of the photoconductive belt; scraper means for cleaning the brush means by removing a remaining toner from the pile material of the brush means; said blade means including a rotary part on which a plurality of blade edges are supported, the rotary part being rotatable around a shaft extending in a direction parallel to the axial direction of the supporting rollers; a stopper part for locating the rotary part at a third position along the rotation path where one of the plurality of blade edges comes in contact with a photoconductive belt surface; and a drive part for rotating the rotary part around the shaft, responsive to a control signal which is supplied by said recording system to said drive part when a prescribed number of revolutions of the photoconductive belt is reached, so that one of the plurality of blade edges is selectively brought in contact with the photoconductive belt surface.