Patent ID: 8326208

Claim:
A paper discharge device, comprising: a discharge member that discharges paper; a paper carry portion that carries thereon paper discharged by the discharge member; a first moving section that moves the discharge member in a paper width direction to shift a paper carry position at which the paper is carried onto the paper carry portion; a pair of paper side end register sections that holds the paper carried onto the paper carry portion from both sides of the paper in the paper width direction to register position of side ends of the paper; a second moving section that moves the pair of paper side end register sections in the paper width direction; and a discharge paper control section that, when the shifting direction of the paper by the first moving section is switched from one direction to another direction of the paper width direction, controls the second moving section to move the pair of paper side end register sections in said another direction of the paper width direction, wherein each of the pair of paper side end register sections includes a side end restrict member that restricts the side end position of the paper to be carried onto the paper carry portion, and when sheets of paper are discharged by the discharge member and are carried onto the paper carry portion from a first stage while shifting the paper carry position whenever a given number of sheets of paper are discharged, the discharge paper control section controls the side end restrict members in such a manner that, paper of an i-th stage is discharged by the discharge member in a state where one of the side end restrict members located nearer to a center axis defined as a reference for the paper carry position in the paper width direction than the other is in contact with the upper-most surface of sheets of paper of an (i-1)th stage, where i is a natural number equal to or larger than 2.