Debonding Epoxy
 

Can epoxy be debonded with heat? I need to remove a horizontal stabilizer that is epoxied in place and was wondering what the best method of doing so is.

RE: Debonding Epoxy
 

Yes, epoxy can be softened with heat. If the airplane is covered you may end up damaging the covering in the process. Most hobby epoxies will degrade above 175 degrees.

RE: Debonding Epoxy
 

Yep, I do it all the time. Whoops, maybe I'm letting the cat outa the bag!

RE: Debonding Epoxy
 

I have what looks like a soldering iron with a #11 exacto blade on it that I picked up at the local hobby shop to cut through epoxy.

RE: Debonding Epoxy
 

one example of what delman mentioned

http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXKZ05&P=0

RE: Debonding Epoxy
 

I just made a mess of a wings center section and epoxy was used as the glue. Just used my covering heat gun and it softens the epoxy so you can just pull the parts apart.

RE: Debonding Epoxy
 

Yep, it works. The problem turned out to be that the whole tail section of this plane had been broken into two pieces at some time and somebody glued it back together with something that looked like amber colored hot glue. Anyway, when I applied heat, the whole tail end of the plane came apart in pieces. It's all back together now and we went to fly yesterday but the wind was too high. Nobody put anything in the air but we had a good bs session for about four hours. Will try it on the next calm day that I can get to the field. Hope the tail section doesn't fall off in flight.