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With all the good adhesives used in the commercial aviation side has anyone here tried it? I can imagine it would save a bunch of hours and seal the wings up better. I am talking mostly about skinning the wings.
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Here are some things I learned doing metal bond at the majors airframers over the years. First, surface preparation is a very big deal. Without the proper chemical treatments under strict controls, the primer will not stick. Without the primer, which must be applied to a specified thickness, the adhesive will not stick. Metal bonding demands, at the very least, destructive testing to insure the primer and adhesive is performing as advertised. Don't forget environment. Adhesive bonding is sensitive to moisture and should be done in a clean room with close temperature and humidity controls. Finally metal bonding is sensitive to bond line thickness. This is why metal bonding is usually done with film adhesives (which must be kept frozen until use). Paste adhesives are difficult to control at the bond line. Also film adhesives cure best in an autoclave under a vacuum bag. While a metal bonded joint is superior to a fastened joint, I think that it simply is beyond the capabilities of most homebuilders. Good question though.
Cheers
Gerry
Patrol #30 Wings -
The adhesives do have their problems for home use. One nice thing about rivets, they are very fault tolerant. A really bad rivet is still pretty good, and the odds are with you that most of your rivets will be just fine. I've always maintained that half the rivets could fall out of an RV and the biggest down side would be the whistling! :-)David Edgemon RV-9A N42DE flying RV-8 N48DE flying Patrol #232 N553DE in progress ! Plans built.Comment
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Personally, I wouldn't get into a metal plane held together with just surface-to-surface glue. It just doesn't feel good, like standing on a thick glass floor on the 2nd story!
Not when it's subject to the rigours of the real world anyway. Impregnating fibres with glue is a different story, I can understand how that forms a strong permanent bond.
Even rivets sometimes work loose over time. I imagine a glue joint which came loose would just "unzip"......Comment
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I see how some of the specialized stuff requires factory/clean room kind of setup. It seemed like the 3m scotcg-weld kind of product might be possible. I know it would take a expert to probably open a viable study into it and that sucks. Its just hard to imagine that high strength epoxy bonding aluminum will fail but the heat shrunk cloth covered in paint is ok for control surfaces and the rest of the body. I know none of us want to bet our lives on "glue" and the big companies dont care about experimentals.... So we wont see new ground soon... Dang itComment
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Tried to fix the poor wording and it appeared to want to delete, sorry.Comment
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What happens when you need to open up a wing to do repairs?Comment
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Valid point.... How often are wings opened though?Comment
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It seems to be fairly common for tailwheel airplanes to get some wing damage at some point in their existence.Comment
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Field repairable or wing replacement? Just wondering if its damaged is the whole wing replaced or repaired?Comment
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If you have ever seen a Grumman Yankee or any of it's offspring (Traveler or Tiger) you have seen metal bond in production. All metal airliners (DC-9/10,Boeing 727 and beyond) have much metal bond. Fan cowls, nacelles, control surfaces, gear door's and much more. It's an efficient way to join metal detail parts if you have the right facilities, processes and quality control. In the end, a lot of it is the people controlling the materials and assembling the parts. Beech Aircraft was the best metal bond shop I ever saw. They did metal bond for all the majors.
Cheers
Gerry
Patrol #30 WingsComment
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