converting 110 v glue gun to 12 volt?

They do sell battery glue guns.

greg

You would have to remove the 110V heating element and replace it with a 12V heating element. Don't know where you'd get such an animal, but I suppose you could fashion one from the heating element from a 12V appliance such as a soldering iron, cooking appliances for camping, etc. You might be able to use the resistance wire from a wire-wound power resistor. I've never had one of these glue guns apart, so I can't say how easy or hard it would be to do.

Probably just a dumb question..but..if the 110 v unit has a coil of resistance heating wire..and the aforementioned 12 v unit has a coil of resistance wire...can I calculate how much of the 110 v wire I would need to make it heat on 12 v d.c.? i.e. can I cut it shorter..or ....add .....more of the same wire??

There must be a number and gauge in there someplace?? ...

or...can I put a resistor into the 12 v circuit to make it "look like" the

thanks sorry for the dumb questions...but you guys know this stuff..I don't. Rich

p.s. the 110v gun that I have here is a 40 watt gun...with two choices..low temp ( which is what I need and use ) and high temp. The glue they sell will melt at either temperature..

Rich-

If you only cut the wire shorter, you might get the same power on 12 volts. But with ten times the current you would burn out the wire.

Just for discussion, suppose you cut the resistance wire into 10 equal pieces, reconnected them in parallel and applied 12 volts. The resulting combination would draw ten times the current at one tenth the voltage, which equals the original power. In theory it would work, but in practice, you would need to wind the parallel wires into the original space without any of the coils touching.

I think your best bet would be to look in the hobby shops for a battery powered glue gun. If you can't find one, a 50 or 100 watt DC-to-AC inverter would be fairly small, and they are readily available. The smaller ones may be built with an integral lighter plug, so an automotive lighter socket would be needed to use them.

Fred

"richg99" wrote in news:swnjk.5899$ snipped-for-privacy@flpi149.ffdc.sbc.com:

why not just buy the RIGHT TOOL for the job,a 12v glue gun? Or buy an inverter,and then you will have it for other tools,other purposes.

(chances are,the 110v heating element is not accessible to be modified. Besides,if you just take off some of the wire,you lose heating power.A 12V heating element of the same heating power will draw a much higher current,and use a heavier gauge wire.)

When I was in Bartell's drug store (a Seattle chain) two weeks ago, they had a rechargeable glue gun on sale for $9 or so. This was one of those "Advertised on TV" products.

Perhaps a store in your area has a similar product.

Very few of these things can be stripped to the point where you could replace the heater element, as the low price means they're disposable. And even if you could where would you get the correct part? I suppose you could make the correct element - but buying the materials may prove difficult and costly. I've seen rechargeable ones on sale. They would prove a better basis to run off 12 volts via a regulator.

=A0 London SW

How much power does it use? That is how many watts? Since it is glue gun it is almost 100% likley to be resistive load. So no motors or fans etc. Soldering irons are similar. Therfore one of those addapters used in cars to run small household appliances from the car battery 'might' do the job?

For example our smallest glue gun uses IIRC around 24 watt. So plugged into the 120 volt wall outlrt at home, at home it use 120 volts at 0.2 amps =3D 24 watts. (120 x 0.2 =3D 24). So you would need an auto inverter that will supply 24 watts at 120 volts with input from a car battery at 12 volts. Just for the record it will draw a little more than 24 watts from the car battery because of the slight inefficiency of any device. Even if that is say 30 watts, no matter. That's less than 3 amps drain on the car battery; probably about the same as leaving on the parking lamps! (12 x 2.5 =3D 30 watts). Have seen small inverters in auto parts and big box stores. To run a glue gun inverter does not have to be anything elaborate. Don't try to plug in anything too big to a very small inverter though. Someone here tried plugging in a toaster oven; probably around 1000 watts, into their auto to 110 volt inverter for their low power lap- top that hardly gets very warm (nothing close to 1000 watts!) and then wondered why it would not work!!!!!!!! Good luck.

y.

er

that just ain't gonna happen. sorry.

As if this isn't cheap enough.....

I could recommend a more expensive butane shrink wrap tool, but you could also pull out a BIC and flick the stick.

greg

snipped-for-privacy@zekfrivolous.com (GregS) wrote in news:g6nnmr$sbd$ snipped-for-privacy@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu:

I think I'd rather use cyanoacrylate instead of hot glue for in-field model repairs.

of course,if you're using a 12VDC-110VAC converter,then you can also use your Dremel,charge NiCd packs,etc. it would also be available for emergency use elsewhere.

Jim Yanik Inscribed thus:

I would go with Jim ! My glue gun heater just contains a tube of what looks like carbon with the connecting wires embedded in it. One at each end. I suspect that its just a big carbon resistor with a hole through it.

battery.

rather

I would recomment making hot melt string. Use an ordinary gun to extrude continuously onto a large clean sheet of metal. Then take some and a 12V soldering iron to use the string like soldering , some aluminium expanded metal from car repair shop for reinforcement and some cable ties.