Sheet alignment device with flexible push rod

A sheet post treatment apparatus for stapling, applied to a stapler sorter positioned at both ends of a sheet discharge part of a copying machine and equipped with side plates formed with slot liners of a designated size for successively receiving and carrying discharged sheets by or in the order of pages, and equipped with multiple bin trays attached to said sheet discharge part piled on one another and formed with slots of a designated size at one side thereof for providing a moving path of an aligning operation and equipped with a driving motor installed in the lower end of a side of said bin tray and impressed and regularly rotated by an external driving power source, comprising:

• a power transmitting means, attached to said driving motor, for transmitting driving power;
• a transfer shaft vertically equipped at one side of said bin tray and driven by said power transmitting means;
• one or more feed rollers attached to a designated site of said transfer shaft and equipped with multiple projections of a designated size at regular intervals around a circumference thereof;
• one or more flexible push rods composed of bendable elastic material and, bent at a designated angle, contacted to said feed roller and formed with multiple guide holes at regular intervals in a central part thereof and moved by the projections of said feed roller inserted into and pulled out from the guide holes;
• a receiving housing installed between said side plate and said transfer shaft and formed with a receiving groove of a designated size for receiving length change due to retreat of said flexible push rod;
• an aligning means of a designated length, the length thereof is kept as short as possible for a designated area of a sheet discharge site, positioned at the slot part of said bin tray where one end part of said flexible push rod is inserted and fixed at one side thereof for moving and aligning the received sheets in said bin tray at a site available for stapling through rectilinear movement;
• and
• a light sensor attached at a designated site of a moving path of said flexible push rod, for controlling the level of moving displacement by passing light through the guide holes formed at the central part of the flexible push rod and counting the number of guide holes.