Thanks For the leads Tom, azercraze and Lancie!
Ron good questions and I will try to answer them all.
You are not missing anything, I am turning it all off and on. The only control I have for the temperature is the potentiometer on the heat gun.
if so, then you probably need to take the thing apart and separate out the wires for the heating element
Good idea there except it doesn’t give me control over the temperature output.
This is an industrial machine, we are using the heat gun to cut thin plastic of a large load of product. The plastic is similar to the saran wrap you use to cover your food. At different times the manufacturing facilities will be running different product, with different properties, that force us to change the "cutting" temperature. After a line of wrap is cut we remove it off the load.
I used a cheap industrial heat gun to test the theory. The life expectancy and reliability of these heat guns is not good enough for an industrial application. I dont necessarily have to know the temperature output as much as I need to be able to change it. Although knowing the temperature would be helpful.
I am going to check out the suggestion Ron made.
Thank you very much for your time and input. This is a great forum, usually I just view because you guys are more helpful than I can be. I’m glad there is a place that people can share ideas and thoughts like this.
Thanks again