Patent ID: 7731170

Claim:
An open/close mechanism for a housing, the open/close mechanism comprising: a plate member provided on a side of the housing and configured to pivot upon an axis between an open position and a close position; a box member that is arranged in the housing beneath the plate member and that can be drawn out of the housing from the side: and a restricting unit that is coupled to the plate member and that abuts against the box member when the box member is set in the housing and when the plate member is in the open position thereby restricting detachment of the box member from the housing, wherein the housing is a housing of an image forming apparatus, the plate member is a plate tray and the box member is a box tray configured to stack paper, and the open/close mechanism further comprising: a paper carrying mechanism configured to carry a paper from any one of the box member and the plate member to an image forming unit of the image forming apparatus.