In an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic copying machine or a printer, as a developing agent, a fine powdery developer has been conventionally used. Further, in the case where the developer in a main assembly of the image forming apparatus is consumed, the developer is supplied to the image forming apparatus by using a developer supply container.
As a method of supplying the developer, since the developer is very fine powder as described above, such a method that a developer supply container is mounted in the main assembly of the image forming apparatus so that the developer is not scattered, during a developer supply operation and is discharged from an opening little by little has been adopted. The developer supply container which is used in accordance with such a developer supply method has a bottle-like shape which is substantially cylindrical and is mounted and used in the image forming apparatus main assembly. The developer supply container itself is rotated by receiving a driving force from the image forming apparatus main assembly to feed and discharge the developer. Such a developer supply container has been proposed.
The above-described image forming apparatus main assembly and the developer supply container have been used in common with various kinds of image forming apparatuses in order to reduce costs. However, when the commonality thereof is completely realized, there arises such a problem that a developer supply container containing a developer different in color or kind from a proper developer supply container to be mounted is erroneously mounted in the main assembly of image forming apparatus (hereinafter referred to as a “setting (mounting) error”).
For this reason, in recent years, in order to prevent such a setting error that the developer supply container containing a different developer is erroneously mounted in the image forming apparatus main assembly, for example, such a measure that detection of a setting error of the developer supply container containing a different kind of developer is performed by a combination of a recess portion provided to the image forming apparatus and a projection portion provided to the developer supply container (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Applications Nos. Hei 10-63077, Hei 7-168430, 2004-138694, etc.).
However, in the case of employing the combination, an operation for aligning a position of the projection portion of the developer supply container with a position of the recess portion of the image forming apparatus main assembly is required to be performed by an operator. Accordingly, in the conventional constitution, a positional alignment operation becomes required, thus putting a burden on the operator.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds