I was repairing some garden hose today, softening the rubber with the Milwaukee cordless heat gun to make it easier to slip over the new hose end, and I thought: “why haven’t I reviewed this tool yet?” I don’t use it every day, but it’s one of my favorite new tools.
We first talked about the cordless heat gun after NPS17. Milwaukee introduced it at that show and said it would be out in September of 2017. I think it was late September when I got my review sample, and I’ve loved using it ever since.
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To review, the cordless heat gun specs are:
- 875°F max temp
- 6 CFM Airflow
- One charge, 40+ connections (w/ 5.0Ah battery)
- Reaches temp 30% faster than corded
- Guarded nozzle and stands on battery pack
- Ladder hook
- LED light
- Length: 6.35″
- Weight: 3.2 lbs
Some specs have changed since we first wrote the preview post. We were told at NPS17 that the max temperature would be 1000°F, but when the press release came out in late August 2017, they had changed it to 875°F. Milwaukee also changed runtime claims, from 20+ minutes with one 5.0 Ah battery, to 40+ connections on one 5.0Ah battery.
The nozzle is about 1.3″ (or 34mm) wide and works with my WEN heat gun accessories, or you can purchase the Milwaukee heat gun accessory assortment (49-80-0300).
The M18 cordless heat gun kit is now sold both as a kit and a bare tool. The kit includes a 5.0 Ah battery, M18/M12 charger, 3/8″ concentrator nozzle, hook nozzle, and carrying case for $239. The bare tool runs $119. You probably won’t be able to find either locally and will have to resort to ordering online.
Buy Now (Kit via Home Depot)
Buy Now (Bare Tool via Home Depot)
Buy Now (Bare Tool via Acme Tools)
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Interestingly enough, there’s a hard to find 2688-21K kit that Acme Tools and a few other retails sell, combining an M18 cordless heat gun kit (2688-21) with a bare tool soldering iron (2488-20) and an M12 battery (48-11-2420) for $349. That’s $239 for the heat gun kit, $69 for the bare soldering iron, and $49 for the battery all totaling $357. The bundle ends up saving you $8.
Buy Now (via Acme Tool)
Operation
When you pull the trigger of the M18 cordless heat gun, not only does it energize the heating element and start the fan blowing air, it activates the LED workplace illumination. Once you remove your finger from the trigger, the LED stays on for 10 seconds then fades away.
One thing that Milwaukee touts is the guarded nozzle. Even though the cordless heat gun can stand on the battery, the nozzle is shrouded so that the hot element can’t touch anything if the heat gun accidentally falls over.
Above, you can see thermal images of the heat gun after I ran it continuously for 90 seconds. If you look directly at the heating element, you can see that its temperature is still 381°F, but looking at the heat gun from the side you can see the hottest part of the heat gun that’s exposed is 98°F.
After taking the thermal images and seeing only 381°F, I wondered what the actual output of the heat gun was. I setup the gun with the hook nozzle and put a K-type thermocouple in the center of the nozzle. I thought this would give the best chance of getting the highest temperature reading, since the hot air will be reflected back at the probe.
I ran the heat gun for about 90 seconds, and logged the results. This would show me two things: how fast the air stream climbs to a usable temperature, and how hot the air stream gets.
I show the results below, but before I get to that, I ran some more tests because I was puzzled by the low temperature results. With this setup I only reached a little under 500°F in 80 seconds. According to the specs, I should be seeing 875°F.
For the next test, I stuck the thermocouple junction inside the mesh screen and logged for 90 seconds. This time I reached a max temperature of a little over 700°F, still below the stated 875°F.
Wondering if this was just Milwaukee’s specmanship, or if this was an issue with other heat guns, I decided to test my WEN Model 2010 2-speed heat gun. It is supposed to reach 700°F and 920°F on the low and high settings respectively. I ran the same test with the hook nozzle on both low and high speeds and recorded the results from all the tests below.
From this limited data set, I suspect that the temperature stated in the specs really has little to do with the actual temperature achieved at a workable distance from the nozzle of the heat gun. I don’t know if the stated temperature is the temperature the heating element reaches or some other mysterious measurement. All I can make out from this test is that the stated max temperature seems to be meaningless for actual operation of either heat gun.
From the graph, you can also see the amount of time it takes for each heat gun to get to a usable temperature.
I previously tested the M18 heat gun, and it takes about 10 seconds from a cold start before it will begin shrinking 1/4″ heat shrink, which means the start up time for heat shrink tubing is about 10 seconds. Looking at the chart, this would put the temp around 350°F. This is consistent with most heat shrink tubing specs that call for heating at 250 to 350°F.
I tried the same test with my WEN heat gun on low, and the heat shrink started shrinking in about 5 seconds. Looking at the graph above, it doesn’t get hotter any faster on low than the M18 Heat gun, but I think it has more airflow.
After all this temperature testing, I wondered how much current the gun was drawing from the battery, since the WEN heat gun supposedly draws 1000W on low and 1500W on high (actually 947W and 1323W). To match the output on low, the Milwaukee cordless heat gun would have to draw something like 50A, or be much more efficient.
I removed the top shell from the heat gun and found I could not get my clamp meter around either of the battery wires, as they were too short and extremely stiff. The best I could do was measure the current to the fan motor and the heating element — which should account for most of the current draw anyway.
First, I measured the current draw from the heater to be about 16.4A. Then, I put both the motor and heater wires into the clamp meter and measured 16.6A. It’s not a surprise that most of the power goes into the heating element.
After adding in the LED and the other circuitry, let’s call the total current draw from the battery 17A. That’s only about 300W! This is almost 3X as efficient as the WEN heat gun on low, with only a little lower performance.
To get runtime, you divide 5Ah/17A which is about 0.3 of an hour, or about 18 minutes.
Later it occurred to me that what I was measuring was the current during the heat up time of the element. Looking at the chart above, the heat gun never reaches a steady state, it just keeps slowly rising. So I don’t think the current draw would decrease significantly after time. Plus it still is going to take a lot current to maintain the heater temperature with air blowing across it.
Also, this cordless heat gun is designed for quick heating jobs like bending tubing or heat shrink, not long term applications like stripping paint. So the heat gun is probably only going to be used in bursts of 90 second of less.
Uses
In the beginning of the article I mentioned I was using the heat gun to put a new end on a garden hose. I’ve found that instead of struggling to force the end completely into the cold hose, that it is much easier to heat up the end of the hose so that it stretches easier.
The easiest attachment for this task is the hook nozzle, which lets you heat the entire circumference of the hose without having to rotate it.
Once the hose is warm enough, you can simply press the end into the hose with very little effort. Just don’t overheat the hose so that it gets too soft.
One of the most common uses for a heat gun in electronics is for shrinking heat shrink tubing. Again, I find the hook nozzle to be the best way to concentrate the heat around the entire tube. Above, I’m finishing a connection between two servos as part of a 3D printer upgrade.
When I upgraded my air hoses to V-Style air line couplers, I couldn’t get at the nut to remove the old coupler because there was a strain relief in the way, and it wouldn’t budge. After less than a minute using the cordless heat gun with the spreader nozzle (sold separately), I was able to slide the strain relief out of the way to access the nut.
Another use I found for the heat gun was to soften 3D prints made from ABS. The custom K’Nex piece I made is designed to be fit with a ball bearing. It’s a really tight fit, but if you heat up the part, it’s much easier to install the bearing.
The finished K’Nex bearing holder is for the drive of a K’Nex RC car – I still haven’t finished this project.
Heat guns can be extremely useful for removing stubborn labels without tearing and leaving gummy residue.
Finally, the last thing I’ll highlight is using a heat gun to make using a wax filler pencil easier to use. I sometimes use wax filler because in some circumstances it matches the wood better than putty, plus once it’s in it doesn’t shrink, so you don’t have to go back for a second coat.
But it can be extremely frustrating to use because it is hard to get into a nail hole and wants to pull out when you try to wipe away the excess. Warming it up a bit helps to make it flow better.
You can also resoften the wax while it’s in the hole to it makes it easier to get a clean and invisible fill.
I didn’t strictly need a cordless heat gun for any of these uses, but for some tasks the cordless tool made things go a lot faster. For example, it was easier to use a cordless heat gun to help with attaching a new fitting to my garden hose, rather than dragging the hose to an outlet, or bringing the running an extension cord to the hose so that I could use a corded heat gun.
Summary
Since I only ran one trial of one sample for most of my tests, you should take the results as a general indicator, not a real performance measure, but I think it gives a good picture of the M18 heat gun.
It may not get as hot, blow as hard, or warm up as fast as an cheap corded heat gun, but it will get the job done in a reasonable amount of time.
Despite not being as powerful as a corded heat gun, the M18 heat gun offers several significant advantages. It’s portable, so you can take it to where it’s needed and quickly get the job done, rather than taking the work to an outlet or running an extension cord. It’s designed to stand on it’s battery and be ready to grab quickly, plus if it does fall over, the hot end is shrouded in most situations. With most corded heat guns, you have to be particularly careful where and how you set the heat gun down.
Is this the heat gun to make 40 heat shrink connections sitting at your workbench or to strip all the the paint off the side of a building? Probably not, but if you have some quick jobs in the field, especially when you are away from AC power, this M18 cordless heat gun is going to save you some time.
I find that I frequently reach for the M18 cordless heat gun over my corded heat gun, even when I’m at my bench. It’s one of those tools that puts a smile on my face every time I use it because it is so convenient.
Buy Now (Kit via Home Depot)
Buy Now (Bare Tool via Acme Tools)
Buy Now (via Acme Tool)
Thank you to Milwaukee for providing the review sample.
Nathan
as much as I like the idea I don’t know I’d buy one. I mean I see the appeal for car accessory installers for example. and plumbers I guess.
but I’ll stick with corded.
fred
We used mostly Master heat guns in the plumbing business. For thawing – its not only temperature – but flow rate that gets the job done efficiently. Having the ability to vary the temperature on some of our Master guns was also useful. BTW – I see that Master now makes guns that sense surface temperature.
fred
I should have mentioned that the old corded Milwaukee #750 heat gun – and lots of clones like the Wagner 750 were made by MHT Products (as in Master Heat Tool) in Racine Wisconsin.
I think that Master still makes their guns in Wisconsin.
The yeti
Brother has this milwaukee. It kills batteries really fast. Other than that. Works as advertised. We used it on a job using 2 inch plastic pvex pipe.
Pete
Maybe the heat guns ability to warm up to temp is based on using it in Las Vegas yesterday?! lol my truck said it was 113 outside.
Tim E.
I got the M18 heat gun right when it came out, and it has been hugely useful. I do a lot of electronics and electrical work, and I find myself heatshrinking connections more now that I have the cordless heat gun than I was when I just had the corded. It’s just much more convenient to grab and do something quickly. Heatshrinked connections get a slightly added degree of strain relief from the heat shrink and I think make more solid connections that last longer under extreme conditions.
Two larger projects come to mind that the cordless heat gun was indispensable for (along with the M12 soldering iron, which might just beat the heat gun for my favorite Milwaukee tool of all). One was straight from their advertising, I was rewiring my car stereo because half the butt splice crimped connections had gotten fuzzy, so I was using the solder seal connectors, and the cordless heat gun was easier to maneuver and get in there and get it done, and had the benefit of not having to run the extension cord and risk blowing the breaker in my garage. The second project was rewiring a boat, we were using adhesive heat shrink all over the place to make the lug crimps watertight, and had to do this with the boat out at the curb. I could have run extension cords out there for everything and swapped around as needed, I guess, but the M18 heat gun was convenient and worked great. Only thing I ran an extension cord for was the big shop vac to suck up water soaping out the bilge and places before we crawled through them or pulled clean wire through. Maybe Dewalt will make a 14 gallon wet dry vac that’s Flexvolt 120V hybrid to remedy that…
The other thing I use the heat gun for is working with models and miniatures. I usually work in short bursts, and have to clean up when I’m done. Getting the corded heat gun out and plugging it in, being careful with it (what Ben says about having to watch how you put them down can’t be overstated), and it taking up space when I only need it maybe once or twice, it’s very inconvenient. The Milwaukee one I can just put standing up in a corner of the desk, and it’s as easy as grabbing it off my tool shelf and it’s ready to go. Works great for heating plastic for bending or heating various fillers and such. I also use the little ryobi high volume inflator kind of like a hairdryer for drying paint, or for blowing ripples or minuscule waves into fake water. It’s another tool I could use a fan or a corded hair dryer or something, but having that tool cordless even though I’m stationary at a desk is a huge convenience. It is readily available right there with no effort, doesn’t take up as much space on my desk so can stay on it, and works great. The glue gun is my only cordless question mark for doing models and miniatures, I love the cordless glue gun for most other stuff like hanging Christmas lights or other craft projects, but it’s too big sometimes and not dual-temp, so sometimes doesn’t work for the model work.
fred
How you put them down was – in part – solved by Master – by their adding a flat square plate on the back of the blower housing. That also let you stand them on a bench for hands-free use. The downside is that it makes the whole tool bulkier.
Evadman
This is my kind of review, lots of numbers, testing, actual usage, comparison to similar products; this is great. Thank you very much.
Mike
Its a pretty meet idea I wonder if you put the new 12amp battery would it get hotter
Jim Felt
Great review. Thanks for your effort.
So now you’ve got a new personal best Review benchmark?
;-)~
I bought both of them last Fall as soon as they were available and agree with Tim E.’s assessment. They were my first or second Milwaukee M-anything purchases.
KokoTheTalkingApe
Thanks for the graphs, Ben! It is interesting that the air temperature is so much lower with the hook nozzle in place. I wonder if it is causing cool air to mix with the hot air stream. I imagine you’d need a beast of a computer to run an airflow simulation though.
James C
As I was recently repairing 3/4 pvc irrigation pipe, I was wondering if a heat gun would help by making patch pieces more flexible and easier to squeeze in to an existing run. Any thoughts?
fred
It sounds like its worth a try for “out un the field use” where using a torch or corded tool would be a nuisance. We did quite a bit of PVC pipe bending – which is a similar task – but perhaps requiring a bit more heat applied over a larger area. Our best most consistent results were using a Greenlee electric heat box:
https://www.amazon.com/Greenlee-851-Electric-Heater-Bender/dp/B001HWGI6K
We tried using one of our corded heat guns on smaller pipe sizes – but with inconsistent results. We were not using it during Las Vegas summer ambient temps – but more likely bending a conduit run out to a barn during a Connecticut winter. We also bought a portable tool called a HotBend that uses propane and compressed air – it had a learning curve that we really never got past – perhaps because we did not use it every day with the same crew.
firefly
Awesome review. I love how you not only measure the temperate of the heat gun but you also measure the temperate of another similar corded tool to get a baseline.
David Zeller
One of the site’s best reviews. I loved that you added a bunch of use cases, in addition to the thorough review. Sometimes I don’t know how a tool is used, or in this case, how many other ways.
Thanks!
(Ha! Autocorrect changed tool to fool in the last sentence. I almost left it for the laughs.)
David
Jared Hardison
I got one free when I bought my M12 ProPex kit and can attest that this tool is home run. Its great for reforming pex for bends and kinks. I also use it for applying edge banding to hard to reach areas on woodworking projects.
Joe
It works as advertised,nothing spectacular
ToolOfTheTrade
Be glad that it was a free rleview sample and you didn’t have to pay for it. It just goes to show how full of shit they and their advertising are. What a gimmick! It can’t even heat up to the temperatures that they advertise? And I don’t know which one sounds worse, 20 min out of a 5ah battery or 40+ connections. Connections of what exactly? Why would you waste a 5 ah battery for less than 20 minutes of use with something that doesn’t get the job done. What an absolute waste of application and usefulness. Very poor display of innovation. Why would I want to buy a half-assed tool that costs more but lacks the performance of what a heat gun should be able to do. I can’t think of any situation that would make this worthwhile to own and to where I would waste a 5ah battery. I just bought a corded one about 2 weeks ago that has dual range, digital temperature adjustment up to 1700°, cooling fan, cools off before turning off, ability to set down on bench while in use, and 2 deflection tips for less than $65. So why does this cost double?
glenn
How does one waste a 5.0ah battery? You do realise that you can recharge them?
Wes
I have a corded heat gun and picked up this cordless on sale at a discount retailer.
Cordless is handy – nope, it is not an industrial heat gun.
But, sometimes you don’t need industrial and pulling out an extension cord is just enough work to make it not worthwhile.
The day I got it, I used it to pull stickers off my utility trailer, heat shrink a connection in a car out in the driveway, and warm up some glue to break a joint. All things I could have done with the industrial gun, but which I hadn’t gotten around to because of the overhead of pulling out the corded heat gun.
I guess that means I am lazy, and maybe the cordless is just a fun factor. But it is fun and I get things done with it that I otherwise don’t.
I don’t see it as a waste.
Stuart
I look forward to reminding you about this post, maybe in a few years, when you might call cordless heat guns “awesome,” in the same way you were so critical of cordless miter saws before you tried and then bought one.
Ben goes into detail, describing how and why this cordless heat gun has been a convenience and beneficial for the tests and usage he has put it through.
Some readers have bought the cordless heat gun for their needs, or would like to buy one. Are they all wrong? Are they all being tricked somehow into thinking this will provide advantages for them, compared to a corded tool? No. Because they see the benefits as it applies to their needs and wants.
Your claims that this Milwaukee M18 cordless heat gun is a gimmick and a waste, and “absolute waste of application and usefulness,” is difficult to argue against, in the same way that it’s hard to talk with someone who cannot see why anyone would ever choose a 10 ounce ribeye steak over a 12 ounce hamburger. Surely, everyone should go for the option that gives you more food for less money, right?
For your needs? Maybe the cordless heat gun is a waste. And you would be welcome to express that opinion. But the way your comments reads, it can be summed up as saying “it’s not for me, and so it doesn’t belong in the world.” Respectfully, that is absolutely wrong.
ChrisP
Great review! At first glance I thought AVE had joined the ToolGuyd team.