Abstract: A roller assembly for bending sheets of glass, including a plurality of units each comprising a plurality of rollers mounted on support shafts. The support shafts pivot, which tilts the rollers, so that the surface of each roller is tangent to the bottom of the bent glass sheet.

Abstract: A batch method and apparatus for bending glass sheets includes an oven where the glass sheet is oscillated back and forth on mini-rollers until it reaches a hot, softened condition, at which point the vertical position of the rollers is changed so that the top surface of the rollers have the contour of a desired bent glass sheet. The hot glass sheet conforms to the contour of the rollers and is quickly transferred to a quench section for quenching. The quench section includes rollers and quench tubes which have the same contour as the bent glass sheet.A continuous method and apparatus for bending glass sheets includes an oven having a heating section where a glass sheet is heated to a hot, softened condition while being conveyed on full faced rollers, and a bending section having minirollers which support the flat glass sheet and then change in vertical position to the contour of the desired bend for bending the hot, softened glass sheet.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for bending glass sheets. In a first embodiment a heated glass sheet is moved into a bending section by rollers which are retracted to drop the heated glass sheet onto a mold where the glass sheet sags into a desired bent shape, then quenched between quench heads and lifted off the bending mold up to the upper quench head by air pressure, the rollers then close beneath the glass sheet and the glass sheet is deposited onto the rollers for conveying to a cooling station. In a second embodiment, the hot bent glass sheet is transferred on a mold from a bending section by a first shuttle to a position between the quench heads for quenching then removed from the mold by blowing air through the lower quench head until the glass sheet contacts an upper second shuttle which is transported to a blow-up section where the sheet is lowered onto a roller conveyor to a cooling section.