Adhesive bonding of model airplanes

Flying model airplanes as a hobby – for some it is an exciting sport, for others a way to relax and unwind. Either way, model flying is definitely multi-faceted. The different variations include simple hand throw gliders as well as complex turbine model jets. This blog post focuses on the so-called park flyer or snow flyer, an aerobatic model plane, which is perfect either for indoor use or for outdoors when the wind conditions are good. Thanks to its simple and featherweight construction, the park flyer only needs a simple power unit and few electronic components.

Before you can be a hobby pilot and let your model plane rise up to the sky, you need to put it together first. Interest in and understanding of technical constructions are therefore important prerequisites for model making.

The core of our park flyer is made of foamboard – a leight-weight board, which consists of rigid foam coated with paper on both sides. This material can be easily cut to size with a box cutter. The individual components can then be fixated with the help of an adhesive to form the basic structure of the model plane.

Our WEICON Contact Adhesives are ideal for joining different materials – for example wood, plastic, rigid foam and metal. Unlike bondings with a glue gun, these instant adhesives show very good adhesion to many different materials and form strong adhesive bondings. Using struts made of wooden skewers as well as adhesive tape on critical points, like on flaps and the tail unit, provides additional stability.

The power unit is basically made of a main board with mounted servos, the drive motor and a battery. Here, the cut out wooden pieces are bonded with WEICON Contact VA 1403 Cyanoacrylate Adhesive to form the motor housing and then attached to the slide. The advantage of the slide is that you can pull out the whole propulsion system, if needed, and use it in different model planes.

Every model flying pilot knows: All planes touch down eventually. The only question is “how?“. If the landing is not quite so soft and something breaks, that is always annoying. Our park flyer has also had to endure a bumpy landing and the joint between the wing and the frame had loosened. A fast rescue for all unlucky pilots: Our WEICON Contact VA 1408 Cyanoacrylate Adhesive. With this instant adhesive with low viscosity, you can easily perform quick repair works. On our park flyer, we applied a small amount of the instant adhesive between both components et voilà – the flyer was good to go after a few minutes.

For bonding foam materials (e.g. Styrofoam, Styrodur or EPP), which are often used in the construction of model airplanes, you should only use “foam-compatible“ adhesives.

These include the following of our WEICON products, some of which were already mentioned above:

In this video, you can see what happens, if you use a “foam-incompatible“ adhesive.

By the way: Our WEICON Contact Adhesives can also be used in other fields of model making, like the architectural model making, where polystyrene rigid foam is often used as well.

From April 4th to 7th, the INTERMODELLBAU, which is the largest trade fair for model making and modelsport, takes place in Dortmund. More than 500 exibitors with more than 20,000 models in 10 halls expect you there. From traditional model trains to model planes and model boats as well as live shows, the trade fair includes everything that makes the model making enthusiast happy!