Patent ID: 8353178

Claim:
A refrigerator having a main body cabinet including a storage compartment and a door coupled to the main body cabinet to open and close the storage compartment, the refrigerator comprising: an ice making housing mounted in the door forming an ice making chamber; an ice making tray having a rotational shaft rotatably accommodated in the ice making housing; an ice generating unit to freeze water supplied to the ice making tray; an ice separating unit which is mounted in the ice making housing and separates ice cubes from the ice making tray; an overflow preventing member which is rotatably coupled directly to the ice making housing along a lengthwise direction of the ice making tray and prevents overflow of water accommodated in the ice making tray; and a driving unit which is provided adjacent to the ice making tray and the overflow preventing member and allows the overflow preventing member to reciprocate between an ice separating position separating ice cubes from the ice generating unit and a cover position covering the ice generating unit, wherein the driving unit comprises a driving gear which is provided in the rotational axis of the ice making tray and rotates by the operation of the ice separating unit, and a driven gear which is provided in a rotational axis of the overflow preventing member and engaged with the driving gear to rotate together, and wherein the driving gear and the driven gear of the driving unit simultaneously rotate the ice making tray and the overflow preventing member in opposite directions to each other, respectively, whereby the ice making tray and the overflow preventing member are always concurrently in motion or stopped.