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The $200 heat gun that saved my skin on a G450 panel
I used to laugh at the fancy heat guns the senior guys carried, figured a $30 one from the hardware store does the same thing. Last week on a Gulfstream 450 retrofit in Phoenix, my cheap gun melted a bundle of coax jackets and I spent 6 hours re-terminating them. That new one with the digital readout held 250F exactly, so has anyone else ever had a budget tool cost them more time than the premium version would have?
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rowanw9113d ago
That exact scenario is why I stopped buying cheap heat guns years ago. The digital readout isn't about being fancy, it's about knowing the temp didn't drift while you were moving the gun around. Once you melt one harness or shrink tube in the wrong spot, the savings from a budget tool disappear real fast. For critical work like coax or anything with Teflon, I treat the gun like a precision tool and check the temp at the nozzle, not what the dial says. Also, the cheap ones tend to surge when the compressor kicks on or if you're on a long extension cord, which nobody thinks about until something cooks. If you do a lot of panel work, it's worth having a backup that you know is accurate even if it costs more.
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