Quote:
Originally Posted by A930Rocket
How did you attach the material to the frame? It’s very tight looking. It looks like a plastic that you heat to shrink to the frame. Like they do for boats, for winter storage.
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The material is called oratex. It's made by the German company lanitz. It's very much like the rc model covering material... some of those are stretchy mylar, but a few are dacron based. With rc covering the entire backside of the covering is coated with glue... This stuff has no glue on it.
You glue this stuff with a paint on water born glue... 2 coats, 2 on the airframe and 2 on the fabric where it attaches to the airframe, its heat activated. Its pretty simple, the legacy systems are much more involved.
With this system, once the perimeter is glued down, heat shrinks it tight, no painting is necessary, as the finish is applied at the factory. It's lighter than the older systems, it's a bit tougher as well... those are the upsides. The cons are, the amount of attention to detail it needs, it requires a different skill set and patience to get it right, it will shrink or stretch as needed, up to 30%. The other downside is the expense, it's almost double the cost of the older system of gluing the dacron to the airframe then saturating it with chemicals to a point which it will take paint. Both are excellent and I'm proficient with either.