Patent ID: 7024889

Claim:
An apparatus for bending a glass sheet, comprising: a furnace including therein a bed support that has a support surface made flat and horizontal throughout its entire length, a plurality of hearth beds and a final hearth bed both having flat bottom portions and placed on the bed support with the flat bottom portions and the support surface contacted with each other, the plurality of hearth beds having top surfaces curved in a direction perpendicular to a conveyance direction with curvature radii that gradually decrease as located more downstream, the final hearth bed being located downstream of the plurality of hearth beds and only the final hearth bed having a top surface curved in both the conveyance direction and the direction perpendicular to the conveyance direction so as to be upwardly convex, the furnace having a plurality of temperature zones located over the plurality of hearth beds and the final hearth bed and capable of controlling a temperature in each temperature zone; a quenching unit provided with upper and lower air blowers and arranged downstream of the final hearth bed, the lower air blower having a top surface adjacent to the top surface of the final hearth bed in such a manner that a tangent to an upstream end portion of the top surface of the lower air blower forms an angle α with respect to a tangent to a downstream end portion of the top surface of the final hearth bed and is inclined downwardly with respect to a horizontal plane; and a conveyor that conveys the glass sheet in the conveyance direction through the furnace and the quenching unit.