Picked a heat gun over a hair dryer for shrink tubing and nearly melted my workbench

I got into building little electronics projects last month and needed to shrink some tubing on a cable. Everyone in the forums always says use a hair dryer, but I grabbed my dad's old heat gun from the garage instead. Cranked it on high and held it too close, melted a hole right through my plastic desk mat and bubbled the tubing in like 3 seconds. Handled it better after I backed off to 6 inches and used low setting, but honestly the hair dryer would've been way safer for that first try. Has anyone else wrecked something with a heat gun when a hair dryer would've been fine?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliarodriguez1mo ago

Used to swear by heat guns for everything until I did the exact same thing to a soldering mat. Now I grab a hair dryer for tubing every time.

emery2901mo ago

Heat guns are way better if you know what you're doing - just dial it back to low and keep it moving. Hair dryers take forever and sometimes don't even get hot enough for the thicker tubing.

samk771mo ago

emery290 is right that heat guns can be dialed in, but juliarodriguez has a good point too. The problem is that first time you grab a heat gun, you just expect it to behave like a hair dryer with more power. It took me three tries to get the distance right for thicker tubing, and even then my cheap shrink tube started smoking on low. Do you think most people who wreck stuff just hold it too close and too long, or does the type of tubing matter more than the tool?