II. Discussion of Related Art A toothbrush is generally made from lengths of stiff hair densely fixed to a brush part formed at the tip of a handle so that the wet brush part can hardly be get rid of water perfectly by taking the toothbrush down forcefully with a hand after brushing. In addition, the toothbrush is ready to maintain water in the brush part due to frequent use and poor ventilation of a damp bathe room. An experiment reveals that the toothbrush is an unsanitary daily necessary because bacteria are easily propagated.

The densely arranged brush hair is not easy to get rid of foodstuff dregs and provides a good place for the propagation of bacteria. The related art brush is also disadvantageous that the brush hair is broken or bent during the removal of foodstuff dregs to shorten the use life.

5 The previous shortcoming was resolved by the former invention, which provides a toothbrush having a spreading pilus section. The toothbrush was designed to have a plurality of brush pieces formed by dividing a brush head part into a short longitudinal segment. The brush pieces are clustered together by a straightening apparatus for brushing the teeth, while spaced from each 10 other when it is not used, thereby facilitating drying and cleaning the brush pieces and hence resulting in a sanitary use of the toothbrush and extended life of the toothbrush.

The solution as configured as described above, however, is associated with following problems: 15 1) A brush piece assembly, a plurality of brush pieces combining by an expansion plate, is impossible to exchange partially when the brush hair of brush piece is worn-out, because the brush piece assembly is fixed firmly as one set of brush hair. Therefore it should be changed uneconomically as a whole.

2) A slider, a plate for straightening the bent brush piece assembly horizontal, is swayed in the case of brushing the teeth, because it is not engaged concretely with brush pieces, resulting in loosing the coherence between brush pieces and a slider.

5 3) It is not easy to straighten the bent brush pieces by one hand holding toothbrush conveniently because a slider is located at the front of the brush holder. Therefore this application is the improvement of the prior art to provide more economical and more comfortable use of the toothbrush.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 10 It is an object of the present invention to provide a toothbrush having a plurality of brush pieces formed by dividing a brush head part into short longitudinal segments. The brush pieces combined by an expansion plate bent due to its elasticity can clustered together horizontally by a straightening apparatus during brushing, while spaced from each other when it is not used, 15 thereby facilitating drying and cleaning the brush pieces and hence resulting in a sanitary use of the toothbrush.

To achieve the object of the present invention, there is provided a toothbrush made from lengths of brush hairs planted in a brush head part of a toothbrush

holder forming a handle, the toothbrush includes: a plurality of brush piece formed by dividing the brush part into small width; an elastic expansion plate for combining the brush pieces together; a slider for straightening the bent expansion plate horizontal to cluster the brush pieces together; three positioning sills for controlling the position of a slider in combination with a protrusions underneath of the push button. The push button is connected with a slider via a connection bar, which slides along the elongated guide pocket of the toothbrush handle.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a further understanding of the invention and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description serve to explain the principles of the drawings; In the drawings: Fig. 1 is an exploded perspective view of a toothbrush according to the present invention; Fig. 2 is a partial view illustrating an example of a brush piece assembly; Fig. 3 is a side view of a straightened brush piece assembly; Fig. 4 is a side view showing a bent state of the brush piece assembly; Fig. 5 is a vertical cross section view taken along the line A-A of Fig. 3;

Fig. 6 is a cross sectional view taken along the line B-B of Fig. 3; Fig. 7 is an exploded perspective view of another embodiment of the present invention; Fig. 8 is a side view of a straightened brush piece of another embodiment of the present invention; Fig. 9 is a partial view illustrating a example of a brush piece assembly of another embodiment of the present invention; and Fig. 10 is a vertical cross sectional view showing the combination of a push button and protrusions.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT In order to resolve the foregoing problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a toothbrush having each brush pieces individually mounted into the mounting hole on the expansion spring plate. Therefore, each brush pieces can be replace piece by piece. A clustering slider connected with a push button by utilizing the long connection bar, which moves along the deep elongated pocket at the toothbrush handle, whereby the push button can be manipulated by one hand holding a brush handle conveniently. Three positioning sills can control the slider position along the elongated guide pocket by means of a push button and protrusion. Accordingly, the swaying

phenomena of a slider is disappeared due to tight engagement between protrusions at the end of a connection bar and the positioning sills on inner side wall of an elongated guide pocket.

Hereinafter, the preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings Referring to Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, a brush piece fixing part having a fixing hole (10) and an extruding rod (9) attached thereon is integrally formed at the front end of a toothbrush holder (1) which forms a handle. The brush pieces (3') and (4') are formed from an ordinary brush part divided into lines of brush hair (2) in the width direction to have a small width. A transverse hole (7) and a guide projection (12) are formed at the same position in a main body on the upper part of the brush pieces (3') and (4'). Into the transverse hole (7) is inserted an expansion plate (5), and into the guide projection (12) is inserted a slider (6) having the guide groove (11). The brush pieces (3') and (4') are coupled with each other to construct a brush piece assembly (3) in such a manner that the expansion plate (5) is inserted into the transverse hole (7) piercing through the main body. The expansion plate (5) is provided with a clamp (8) and a fixing hole (10) into which the extruding rod (9) of the fixing part in the toothbrush holder (1) is inserted. When the slider (6) is inserted into the guide projection (12) of the brush pieces (3') and (4'), and slides along the guide projection (12), the bent brush piece assembly is straightened horizontally as shown in Fig. 3.

Thus the slider (6) combines the brush pieces (3') and (4') together densely and firmly to form a set of brush part, so that the brush pieces (3') and (4') can be used as an ordinary brush part with being apart form each other. After brushing, one moves the handle connecting with a slider to the rear end of the toothbrush holder (1) to get the slider (6) apart from the brush piece assembly in such a manner that the expansion plate (5) becomes bent again due to its elasticity and widening the space between the brush pieces (3') and (4') as depicted in Fig 4.

This widened space between the brush piece (3') and (4') lets airs in enough to facilitate drying and cleaning the brush part. Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 are the cross section view of a brush piece assembly taken along the line A-A and the B-B of Fig. 3, respectively. Fig. 5 shows the engagement between brush pieces (3') and (4') and a slider (6) by utilizing the guide projection (12) and the guide groove (11). Fig. 6 denotes the engagement between the brush piece assembly and a toothbrush handle (1) by utilizing the clamp (8) and an extruding rod (9).

According to the present invention, the brush piece assembly can be firmly fixed at the front end of the toothbrush holder (1) by means of a clamp (8) and an extruding rod (9). The used brush piece assembly with worn-out brush hair (2) of the brush pieces (3') and (4') can be replaced with a new one. In addition,

one can have a personal toothbrush by varying the color of the respective brush piece assembly.

Fig. 7 through 10 illustrates another embodiment of present invention. As shown in Fig. 7, another embodiment provide similar toothbrush as shown in previous embodiment having a spreading pilus section made from lengths of brush hairs planted in a brush part of a toothbrush holder forming a handle; a plurality of brush pieces formed by dividing a brush head part into a short longitudinal segment; an elastic expansion plate to combine the brush pieces together; a slider (6) for straightening the bent expansion plate horizontally to cluster the brush pieces together; the connection bar (16) for connecting a slider and the push button (15), and moving along the elongated guide pocket (17).

Furthermore, Fig. 8 shows the connection bar (16) having a stopper (18) at front side and a protrusion (20) at the rear side. By the commination of the protrusion underneath a push button and three sills of the inner wall of an elongated guide pocket, one can control the three position of the slider. Three positioning sills for control the slider position are including a usage-sil (19) for fixing the brush pieces when toothbrush is using; a cleaning-sill (21) for expanding the space of the brush pieces when it is drying and cleaning the toothbrush; and a decomposing-sill (22) for disassemble the toothbrush, Due to a spacing gap (25) between the upper part of brush handle and the push button,

it is possible to move to three different sill positions by pressing and sliding backward/forward the push button simultaneously. The slider combines the brush pieces together densely and firmly to form a set of brush part, so that the brush pieces can be used as an ordinary brush part without being apart from each other. Fig. 10 is the cross sectional view of a push button assembly taken along the line C-C. This embodiment is advantageous in that the piece assembly is moved horizontal while surrounding the main body and therefore the brush pieces are not swayed in any case, and it is easy to straighten the bent brush pieces by one hand holding toothbrush conveniently by manipulating the push button along the elongated guide pocket of the brush holder.

Fig. 9 illustrate another embodiment of present invention which the brush piece is installed into the T-shaped expansion plate and fastening by a cap (13) and mating piece (14). The present another embodiment provides a tooth brush made from lengths of brush hairs (2) plated in a brush part of toothbrush holder forming handle (1). The brush pieces (3') and (4') are formed from an ordinary brush part divided into lines of brush hair in the width direction to have a small width. A plurality of brush piece assembled by utilizing the curved expansion plate (5), which is perforated with a T shaped mounting hole (7,10) having a large width (10) enough to let the brush pieces in at the mouth thereof and a smaller width (7) in the middle thereof. Each of main body of the brush pieces is introduced into the mounting hole. Then the mouth of mounting hole is covered

with a cap (13), which is firmly engaged with the mating piece (14) through the larger mounting hole to fix the brush pieces. In this embodiment, it is possible to take all or some of the worn-out brush piece from the mounting holes and replace them with fresh ones.

As described above, the present invention provides a very economical toothbrush having a plurality of brush pieces to construct a brush part with brush hair plated therein, the brush pieces being gathered together or straightened by means of the expansion plate and the slider. The toothbrush can be kept with the space between the brush pieces widened, while it is not used. This facilitates rapid drying and cleaning of the toothbrush and makes it possible to keep the toothbrush in a sanitary state. The toothbrush also makes it possible to replace all or some of the worn-out brush pieces with new ones. The brush piece assembly is moved horizontally while surrounding the main body and therefore the brush pieces are not swayed in any case during brushing the teeth, and easily move the slider to bent or spread brush pieces by one hand holding toothbrush conveniently by manipulating the push button.

It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made in the present invention without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Thus it is intended that the present invention cover the modifications and variations of this invention provided they come within the scope of the appended claims and their equivalents.