Patent ID: 8755732

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a transfer unit to transfer an image from an imaging surface to a recording sheet passing through a transfer nip; a fuser unit to fix a transferred image in place on the recording sheet passing through a fixing nip; the transfer nip and the fixing nip forming part of a sheet feed path along which a recording sheet is fed from the transfer unit to the fuser unit; a detector located between the transfer nip and the fuser unit to detect an amount of sheet skew by which the fed recording sheet is deviated from a proper position in the sheet feed path; an adjustment mechanism having an adjustment plate, displaceable in a vertical direction and a horizontal direction, with elongated guide grooves that accommodate pins that project from a side of a fuser housing that houses the fuser unit and elongated horizontal and vertical slots; rotatable adjustment levers movably fitted into the elongated horizontal and vertical slots, the adjustment mechanism being configured to adjust a relative position of the transfer unit and the fuser unit by rotation of the rotatable adjustment levers in the elongated horizontal and vertical slots of the adjustment plate to obtain proper parallel alignment between the transfer nip and the fixing nip according to the detected amount of sheet skew, the detector includes a pair of sensors to measure a distance between a measurement point and a surface of a recording sheet in the sheet feed path, each sensor being directed to a point slightly inboard of a side edge of a properly positioned recording sheet having a maximum width that the image forming apparatus can accommodate in the sheet feed path, and the sheet feed path extends generally upward between the fuser unit and the transfer unit, such that the fixing nip is positioned above the transfer nip.