Abstract: The present invention provides a shaping mold for shaping heat softenable sheet material which includes a flexible rail having a sheet shaping surface to support a marginal edge portion of a sheet to be shaped and a plurality of controllable actuators secured to the rail and capable of deforming the rail to provide its surface with configurations each having a desired elevational contour. In one particular embodiment of the invention, the shaping rail is a shaping ring having a peripheral configuration which provides generally continuous support about the marginal edge portion of the sheet. A controller is used to control each actuator and deform the sheet shaping surface of the ring from a first configuration having a generally flat elevational contour to a second configuration having an elevational contour that generally corresponds to the final desired contour of the marginal edge portion of the sheet.

Abstract: A carriage having (1) an infrared energy ray emitter and detector and (2) an encoder is displaced over a side of stacked glass sheets to sense density of reflected energy rays as a function of carriage position on the stack. The sensed density of reflected infrared energy rays from the edges of the outermost sheets and the interface between adjacent sheets is less than the sensed density of the reflected rays from the sides of the sheets. The output signal of the encoder and of the detector is acted on to determine the number of sheets in the stack.