U-Glider Wing mounting blocks

thingiverse

On my U-Glider the wings were not solidly held in place by the existing plates and screws. Basically too much foam between the top of the plate and the screw blocks around the tail boom. I designed these two new blocks/plates to extend from the wing upper surface through the wing, and down to (and around) the wing screw-down posts. The new blocks really align and lock onto the tail boom posts, and have taken out nearly all of the wing-wiggle that I was seeing in flight. Print the new blocks and trial fit them onto the tail boom blocks under the wing saddle. You may have to wiggle them back and forth a bit to smooth out any printing artifacts, but mine fit very well and had little play. To use you'll need to pull off the old plates (if a retrofit), and run a shaft/toothpick through the new plate screw hole down through the foam and into the hole in the tail boom block. This lets you line things up so that you can cut a 16.0mm dia hole in the foam that is aligned with the tail boom block. It doesn't have to be perfect, I made mine a bit large and filled in the gap with white Gorilla Glue (which foams and expands as it cures to really fill the gap and grab both the foam and the new post). If you follow that approach put a small section of waxed paper over the plate so that the excess Gorilla Glue that oozes out can simply be patted down before it gets hard to make things pretty smooth. Another nice thing about Gorilla Glue is that it expands by foaming - and you can just "pop" the bubbles in the foam to flatten it out before it sets. Try not to get much glue in the mating post socket so that you can actually place the wing with new posts onto the wing saddle and rotate/press the new blocks so that they position correctly over the tail boom posts. Once they are oriented, Lift/pry the wing straight up to make sure it isn't glued in place (my blocks didn't budge in that step). Note that once the screws are added and cinched down, all the compressive force is between the new blocks and the tail boom mounts. We're no longer squeezing the wing or fuselage foam. I had to "eyeball" the post heights, my foam wing saddle was crushed in shipping and if yours is pristine you may need longer posts (so I've attached the OpenScad file).