Review on 🌡️ ThermoPro TP30 Digital Infrared Thermometer Gun – Non-Contact Laser Temperature Gun (-58°F to 1022°F) with Adjustable Emissivity & Maximum Measurement Range (Not for Measuring Human Body Temperature) by Michael Lightfoot

This is as good a tool as the $500 tool I used 20 years ago pulling wrenches on earth movers. And it didn't have an emissivity setting. This one does. This is a very good tool for the money. An infrared heat gun only sees shades of gray. And each shade of gray has a slightly different emissivity. A funny word that means combined energy in this case. What we want to see is the emitted (surface) heat. But the IR gun reads three types of heat: (emitted, reflected, and radiated) heat. This falsifies the true temperature (radiated heat) of the object. You know that the color changes depending on the heat reflected or absorbed. White and silver reflect a lot of heat. Dark colors absorb heat. Even if you get the right emissivity setting for the paint, the (reflected) heat will. The distance to the object changes the radiated heat. So your reading will still be a bit off. These two variables (reflected and radiated) heat will change the heat gun readings. The reality is that if you get within 5 degrees of the actual temperature with an IR hair dryer, you're good to go. Don't get me wrong, this is the best IR gun I've found in a long time. Yes, and the heat is averaged over the tested area. The closer the better for accurate temperature readings. The adjacent diagram shows that at 24 cm the testable circular area is approximately 2 cm, at 36 cm the field is 3 cm and increases as the distance between weapon and target increases. The farther away from the object, the lower the accuracy, as the infrared gun averages the temperature of whatever it "sees" in the field. It's still a very useful tool. The heat gun was my first tool to isolate problems. How I found a heat gun useful. When something fails or begins to fail, it usually gets hotter or colder than a similar part. I mainly used the heat gun to compare two temperatures, not to find the exact temperature. Even my love was always a few degrees below normal. Hydraulic cylinders heat up more than usual when oil flows through the piston. Supercharger blade drift problem, compare cylinder temperatures. Hotter goes around. Electrical connections become hot due to poor contact. Engine overshoot can be isolated by checking the exhaust manifold temperature in each cylinder. The problem may be colder. The neighbor lost power at the fence in the driveway. I used my old heat gun and tested each outlet for hot. I found one 100 degrees hotter than the others. When I took it apart the socket broke and didn't connect well to the heater plug which in turn melted the socket to the point where the wires came loose. Brakes and wheel bearings lend themselves well to hot air gun testing. I convinced the quarry's maintenance department to check the temperature of the conveyor rollers to find the faulty roller. This became a daily check, noting that many rollers were beginning to fail and it was possible to swap them out during downtime rather than in the middle of the day when 20 trucks were waiting to be loaded. Remember that a heat gun only measures the temperature of solid objects. Air, water, and even ice do not give a true temperature with a heat gun. That damn emissivity thing. If something goes wrong with you, you should check the temperature of some working parts and look for one that is too hot or too cold to find the problematic component. This is a great little heat gun. Don't expect an infrared heat gun in this price range to be very accurate.