microballoons

[Karellen]

what are exactly the "microballoons"?
where can I get them?
Any comercial names?

thanks in advance

Karellen

[peter_jensen]

Here's a link to one incantation (on http://towerhobbies.com/):
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p.pgm?Q=1&I=LXHZ15&P=7

Here's a Google search: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=microballoons


Basically, it's just a powder of low-density high volume stuff that mixes well with epoxy and thick CA (among other things). The idea is to trade a little bit of strength for weight; they're commonly mixed with epoxy when you need to fill a large area but don't want the raw weight of the epoxy alone. You can also mix them up with thick CA and get a good filler to do fillets and such.

The common ones are made of hollow glass balls of some sort, although macroscopically it looks a lot like chalk dust. :)

Tower Hobbies sells a few versions, but I'd support a sponsor (http://www.ezonemag.com/sponsors.htm) if possible.

-Peter