Crafters know that if you need to attach two delicate things together quickly, a glue gun is your secret weapon. If you’re dealing with a real crafting emergency, however, and don’t have a couple of minutes to wait for a glue gun to heat up, Dremel’s new cordless option gets the hot glue flowing in just 15 seconds.
Unlike a nail gun that fires tiny rods of steel into wood, a glue gun isn’t quite as explosive to use. Long sticks of glue that remain solid at room temperature are loaded into the back of a glue gun where they’re heated and flow out as a liquid whenever the trigger is pulled. It’s not as exciting as Spider-Man firing his webs, but the devices are still a preferred tool among crafters because the glue cools and hardens very quickly.
Where glue guns have always been a challenge is the long cord needed for the power-hungry heating element, and the time needed for them to actually get hot enough to melt glue sticks, which can often take as long as five minutes. That’s where the new Dremel Home Solutions 4V USB Rechargeable Cordless Glue Pen makes two tantalising promises.
For starters, the only cord is a removable USB cable that’s used to charge the glue pen’s built-in battery. Dremel doesn’t specify how many glue sticks the pen can turn to liquid before it needs a charge again, but heating elements require a lot of power. (Have you ever seen a battery-powered space heater? You have not.) So, you should expect to have to charge this thing a couple of times a day with heavy use. Unfortunately, unlike drills and other power-hungry power tools, there’s no swappable battery on the glue pen to keep you running indefinitely.
The usefulness of the lack of cord vs. battery life will vary from project to project, but the one feature of Dremel’s new glue pen that will appeal to any user is the speedy warm-up time. It takes about 15 seconds from the moment it’s turned on to the time liquid glue starts flowing, and according to Dremel says the new $US40 ($53) glue pen doesn’t require special low-temperature glue sticks either. It works just as fast with the regular 7-millimetre glue sticks you can find at hardware and craft stores, so unlike the scam that is inkjet printers, you don’t need to keep buying proprietary Dremel-branded glue sticks.