Nippon Sheet Glass Company, Limited

Naohiro Iida

Masaaki Nushi

Hideo Yoshizawa

Seiichiro Honjo

Kaoru Sakurai

Atsushi Miyake

Katsuhiko Kitaya

Togo Tanaka

Mitsuo Kobayashi

Akira Shirai

Hirotaro Usui

A glass sheet shaping apparatus shapes a curved reinforced glass sheet by bending a glass sheet which has been heated by a heating furnace up to a softening point and thereafter cooling the bent glass sheet with a cooling medium and imparting a prescribed stress to the glass sheet. The glass sheet is bent by upper and lower mold members fixed to respective common plates which are interconnected by positioning rods. The unit assembly comprising these upper and lower mold members and common plates is carried on a carrier and moved by a suitable displacing device onto a lower surface plate located in a frame assembly for replacing the existing unit assembly.

Apparatus for shaping glass sheet

A cutting unit and a grinding unit are aligned adjacently and adopt a common contour tracing means numerically controlled with respect to a X-Y plane coordinate system. A cutting tool and a grinding tool are provided on respective .theta.-axes along Z-direction and are commonly controlled about the .theta.-axes to direct in a tangential or a normal direction of the contour. The cutting and grinding tools are shiftable away from a reference point of the .theta.-axis to finely adjust a cutting line and a grinding edge outward/inward a reference contour.

Contour shaping apparatus

A glass sheet bending apparatus has a lower mold and conveyor rolls for conveying a heated glass sheet horizontally to a position over the lower mold, the lower mold having slots for receiving the conveyor rolls when the lower mold is lifted. The glass sheet bending apparatus has a main ring mold disposed around the outer peripheral surface of the lower mold which has a first shaping surface for shaping the central area of the glass sheet, the main ring mold having a second shaping surface for shaping the peripheral edge of the glass sheet. The glass sheet bending apparatus also has an auxiliary ring mold disposed between the main ring mold and the lower mold and having a substantially horizontal, flat support surface for supporting the glass sheet between the central area and peripheral edge of the glass sheet. The auxiliary ring mold is lifted prior to the upward movement of the lower mold and the main ring mold for raising the glass support off the conveyor rolls with its support surface. There is also disclosed a method of bending a glass sheet.

Apparatus for and method of bending glass sheets

An apparatus for bending a glass sheet has at least a lower mold, a conveyor device for conveying the heated glass sheet to a prescribed position over the lower mold, and a plurality of rolls for supporting the glass sheet in the prescribed position. A method of bending a glass sheet is carried out by utilizing the apparatus. The apparatus also includes a device for lowering the rolls to a position below the shaping surface of the lower mold, and an arrangement in the lower mold for accommodating the rolls which have been lowered. The apparatus may additionally have an upper mold coacting with the lower mold. The method comprises the steps of lowering the rolls below the shaping surface of the lower mold, transferring the glass sheet from the rolls onto the shaping surface of the lower mold while the rolls are lowered, and bending the glass sheet into conformity with the shaping surface of the lower mold under gravitational forces. The method may also include the step of lowering the upper mold simultaneously with the downward movement of the rolls, and press bending the glass sheet between the upper and lower molds.

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Tokyo, Japan

Naohiro Iida