Ryobi Super

What is the melting point of vinyl toys?

I just bought a Ryobi 2000watt Heat gun and its lowest setting is 450 degrees celsius I need to use it to cure sculpey modeling clay to my vinyl toy will this be too hot for either the super sculpey the vinyl toy or both???

Polymer clay is PVC (polyvinyl chloride). It will never melt but it will burn if it gets hotter than about 275 F (though some lines of polymer clay will darken or scorch at lower temps, with original Sculpey being the worst, followed by SuperSculpey and Sculpey III--more time or temp in baking will make all polymer clays stronger though and since those 3 are the weakest lines of polymer clay anywhere they're thin or projecting, that would be good...but if you'll be painting over the cured clay, the darkening shouldn't matter).

Most plastics will start to scorch, soften, or melt (depending on the type of plastic) in the range of about 200-300 F, but it's hard to say which kind you have or whether its a combination of types.

The traditional way to cure polymer clay with a heat gun (if that's ever necessary), is to set a thermometer next to the clay item and in the same plane as the front surface of the clay. Then to hold the heat gun at a particular distance and measure the temperature hitting the clay to see when it's the temp desired. The gun can be held a little closer and waved though too.
Remember though that polymer clay will take awhile to polymerize all the way to the center of an item (in an oven, etc) or all the way to the back of an item (using a heat gun or other heat source coming only from one side).

It's often possible though to form the clay right on an item that's not oven-safe at 225-275, then remove, support and cure it in an oven...and after cooling simply glue it back into position.
Or the clay could be firmed up a bit with a heat gun, etc., then cooled and removed, baked, and glued back on.
(There are various releases that can allow the clay to be removed easily, or sometimes just putting everything in the freezer a while will firm the clay up enough to be removed easily--especially important with the "soft" polymer clays like those Sculpeys which distort more easily than other lines.)

You might want to read all about curing polymer clay, supporting it during curing, using heat guns, etc., on the Baking page of my polymer clay "encyclopedia" site:

http://glassattic.com/polymer/baking.htm

It's also quite possible that you could bake the clay on the toy while "completely enclosing" it in some way an oven to insulate it and moderate the temp reaching all parts of the item, or even partly enclosing it (would have been helpful perhaps to know exactly what type of "toy" you have).

You can get at least some info about various kinds of plastics when exposed to heat on these pages too:
http://glassattic.com/polymer/covering.htm > Plastics
http://glassattic.com/polymer/MISC.htm > Melting, Softening or Shrinking Plastics

HTH
Diane B
.